To Be Saved

 Monday night.

I’m at work. It’s a bit after midnight. My shift started on Sunday, of course. I slept a lot Sunday day, going to sleep a bit after 9:00 a.m. and waking up at about 5:20. It didn’t even take that much melatonin to achieve that, which is unusual. I think I’m getting used to my schedule.

It was an eventful week. I had some testing at the main hospital on Thursday that took up the entire morning. Things looked okay, but of course I’m still waiting for the official results. I go back for more testing this coming Thursday.

On my days off, I worked on my covid quilt (the one made with the offcuts and leftover fabric from making masks). I finished up the twelve panels that will make up the body of the quilt. The panels are made up of yard cuts of some of the fabric Dave gave me for my birthday cut into fat quarters that measure 18x22 inches. The leftover mask fabric is arranged on top and raw appliquéd with a tight zigzag stitch (I did not satin stitch them down). I did not cut the leftover mask fabric at all, just collaged it down as is. There are some clearly leftover bits where the curved part of the mask was cut out. There are mis-cuts, where I cut out two right halves or two left halves of a mask and did not have enough fabric to recut the mask. There are strips and bits and so on. I think the collages look interesting, but I’ll have to post pictures soon.

After I appliqued the panels, I backed them with cotton quilt batting and polka dot fabric. I’ve been collecting polka dot fabric with the idea of making a polka dot quilt, so I had about five yards of Tula Pink pom-pom fabric. I decided that I am not going to save fabric anymore if I can at all help it. I have some fabric that I bought when I first started quilting three years ago that has gotten too precious to cut into and I looked at it and thought: If I die of Covid, then what? I will have never gotten to use this fabric that I loved so much. They can drape it over my coffin for my Zoom funeral. So now I’m just trying to use it up. I can always get more, right?

The next step is to connect the larger panels with sashing. The panels are made up of butterscotch brown, burnt orange, and muted pink colors. I think I’ll sash them with a dark brown or whatever burgundy-is color I have. Then I’m going to use some green fabric to put a border on the whole quilt. Then it will be done. Maybe another week? We’ll see how motivated I am on my days off.

Then I’ll start another quilt. I have enough leftover fabric from making masks that I could probably make another quilt or two just elaborating on this theme.

As I make masks, I toss all the leftover bits into a bin about the size of a couple of shoe boxes placed side by side. It holds a surprising amount of fabric. I also save the few inches of thread that I cut off when I’m starting or ending a seam. Some of the bits of fabric are too small to stitch down or stitch to each other. When I see that, it reminds me of a book I heard about (but have yet to read) that was written by a poet who spent part of his youth on his aunt and uncle’s farm. When he was in his late 60s, he and his wife moved back to the farm which had been largely untouched since his aunt and uncle died. They were products of the Great Depression; In one cabinet, he found a box with the label: String too short to be saved.

That is me with my tiny bits of fabric and scraps of thread. Some are too small to be saved, but I can’t throw it out. My grandmother was the same. Her pantry and kitchen drawers held rubber bands from the newspaper and from vegetables. There was always used tin foil, folded up, and the styrofoam trays that come under meat. She had old bread bags, twisty ties, lots of things. I find myself doing the same.

Day before yesterday I had a craving for menudo, so Dave got some takeout for me. The menudo was packaged with small disposable plastic containers of chopped onions and dried oregano and I washed and saved those containers, thinking that I could use them sometime. I also washed and saved the black plastic spoon that came with the menudo.

So the fabric scraps get saved and they become quilts. They have always become quilts—always—in my hands and in the hands of innumerable women throughout history. The bits of thread and scraps of fabric too small to sew together become fabric again. (I sandwich them between cheap muslin and water-soluble interfacing and then sew over them again and again until the whole thing is bonded together and then I wash away the interfacing, leaving a kind of fuzzy, straggly fabric.)

We live in a closed system. I wonder what people are thinking when they throw things away. Where do they think they’re throwing them away to?