As fragile as smoke...

     In the last week of February 2011 my parents’ house burned down. It was the house I grew up in, the house where my parents still lived. When I heard the news I wanted to grab hold of the memories that had burned up with it. The more I tried to preserve them in my mind the more quickly they seemed to go.  You think to yourself when something happens, something wonderful or terrible, I will remember this. The truth is you don’t. Anyone who has ever searched for the keys they just set down or tried to rake in every memory associated with a house that is just smoke in the sky knows this.  

     Now what has this to do with quilting you wonder? How many of us have finished a quilt, a hanging and set it down with satisfaction, or in some cases relief. We’ve stepped back to admire and thought wow, that was quick, slow, easy, hard, I won’t forget about this one.  How many of us have given a quilt, seen the enthusiasm, the appreciation on the receivers face and known, they’d never forget who gave them that wonderful quilt.  The truth is you do forget, and so will they. Memory is as transient and fragile as smoke. It takes very little to sever the link to something, especially an unlabeled quilt. Perhaps you move, perhaps they do. Perhaps someone dies.  The quilt remains and drifts.  Maybe it comes to rest on a bed somewhere with a label stating antique or perhaps it comes across a Museum registrar’s desk and is entered with a pattern name and that dreaded note “maker unknown”. 

     Now I know out there a great many quilters rolling their eyes. Sure, a quilt of mines going to end up in a museum, right.   If I’m lucky it’ll end up on Ebay or at the thrift store when I die, the mutters come.  Speaking as someone who has entered thousands of records in a museum database I can state that there was nothing I dreaded more than that lonely little record of “maker unknown”. On a more humorous note I can state that the original owner of the Captain’s latrine chair I entered probably never thought it would end up in a museum but it did. My point is you never know. You never know when your childhood home might go up in smoke on a winter’s night or your homemade quilt might waft itself someplace great or small. You cared enough to make a quilt, whether it was a gift, something to test yourself on, or just something to keep you warm. You created; you sewed time as well as thread into it.  Give yourself and the quilt a little credit. Grace it with a label; give it a bit of a tether in the world so it doesn’t blow away into anonymity like so much smoke.   These days it is easy to produce that tether, whether or not you want to create your own or just sew a premade one on.       

     Many quilt stores now carry some wonderful labels that you only have to fill in and sew onto the back. Use an acid free pen like a Sakura Micron to fill in the label and you are set.   You can now rest assured that you’re sending your quilt off into the wild world with a little support against the winds of fate.