Just Call Me Doctor

Another PhD* under my belt

There’s nothing quite like making a public declaration that you are going to finish something to make you get your bum into gear and actually get it done. If you read last week, I boldly stated I would finish the three remaining quilts I have had languishing around the house for months years. But because I can’t resist a challenge I decided I would get one of them done this week. It would give me something to write about if nothing else which seemed a good enough reason to do it. I thought a good place to start would be with my least favourite. I’m being kind when I say least favourite because I actively dislike it. A patchwork of pastel squares in colours I would never choose to wear, with which I would never decorate my home, nor even consider painting with, so why I thought I would like them in a quilt I shall never know. I think I may have been going for an English country garden vibe, but I would far prefer to be in Monty’s Jewel Garden.

My first challenge was to actually find the darn thing which was not on display in the bag sitting around the living room like the other two. I was convinced I had hidden it away in a box under the bed, but no it was eventually located in a drawer in the spare bedroom. Not wanting to spend any more money on finishing it I opted to give wadding a miss and simply layer it up with a fleece blanket as a backing, which I know is technically not a quilt having only two layers but I’m not planning on entering it into any competitions so I’m really not bothered.

Challenge number two as I discovered when tacking it together was that the fleece was on the stretchy side, but I was determined to make it work so tacked it all down within an inch of its life. And finally challenge number three was I couldn’t find my walking foot for the machine anywhere. I will have no doubt put it somewhere safe. But not letting a minor detail like that stop me, I carried on regardless and finished the whole thing, including binding it with a not quite matching fabric from my stash, in just two afternoons. Wet and windy afternoons when I couldn’t do much outside. And now that it is done I quite like it. It’s far from perfect and I still don’t like the pastel colours very much, but it will make a good blanket to go on the grass for picnics, for building dens or for wrapping up little people and keeping them cosy, and only having two layers makes it very soft and pliable. So that’s my first PhD* i.e project half done, now completed… Just call me Doctor!

Back last summer with my renewed enthusiasm to finish off my quilts I also embarked on some research into traditional patchwork quilts. The stitching together layers of padding and fabric has a long history possibly dating back as far as the time of ancient Egypt. Traditionally it has been a practical technique to provide warmth and insulation as well a way of recycling and reusing old worn fabrics, although there is frequently a decorative element too. Quilting has a rich history in Europe and North America, which goes way beyond the scope of a single essay, but as well as being practical, quilts are used as decorative features in the home, as a way to bring communities together and some are even made as political statements. What struck me in reading about all these various histories were the stories that are embedded into each stitch that goes into the making of every single quilt. It wasn’t a huge jump to then start thinking about stories that involve quilts. And the following are three that I particularly enjoyed.

I first reached for a novel that I have read before, The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier, the American British novelist possibly best known for her novel The Girl with a Pearl Earring. I am a great fan of all Chevalier’s novels which combine fiction with true life historical elements or characters. The Last Runaway tells the story of Honor Bright, a young Quaker woman who emigrates to Ohio, America with her sister in 1850, looking for a new life after being jilted by her fiancé Samuel. Family tragedy forces her to rely on the charity of strangers and she finds herself alienated and alone in unfamiliar territory. She finds her religious principles tested even within her new Quaker community, as she is faced with the brutal facts of the slavery that divides the country. Gradually Honor finds herself befriended by two women and she is drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network that helps runaway slaves escape to freedom. Stitched into the lines of the story are the stories of the quilts that Honor makes. Those quilts that she has had to leave behind in Dorset, and the quilts she works on in her new life. It is thoroughly researched with some insightful writing on the art of quilt making. When researching the novel, Tracy Chevalier became so interested in quilt making that she is now a committed quilt maker herself. 

The second novel I read was Alias Grace by the award winning Margaret Attwood. Based on factual events around the life of Irish immigrant Grace Marks, who along with James McDermott, was convicted of the murders of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper and mistress Nancy ,in Canada in 1843.  McDermott was hanged for his crime, but Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment. Considered low risk, whilst serving her sentence Grace is released during the day and hired out to serve as a as a domestic servant in the home of the prison governor. A committee of men and women from the local Methodist church hope to have her pardoned and released. Attwood constructs a fictional narrative around this true story through a young psychiatric doctor, Simon Jordan hired by the committee, who interviews Grace each afternoon as she sits stitching quilts. As he tries to establish her innocence by unlocking her buried memories of the events at the time of the murders, Jordan finds himself becoming more and more embroiled into her life and the story weaves together like the patches in the quilts Grace makes.

We never really get to know the extent of Grace’s involvement in the murders, but it is a fascinating story and if you don’t fancy reading the novel you can listen to her true story here in the radio series: Lady killers by Lucy Worsley

Whilst the quilts provide a backdrop to the storytelling in these two novels, in the final novel I read, the quilting takes centre stage. Happenstance by Carol Shields is a novel of two parts, about an ordinary marriage in transition. It is the same story but told from the point of view of both the husband and the wife over the same time span.

In The Husband’s Story first published as Happenstance in 1980, we hear the husband’s version of events. For Jack, his wife is away on a trip for the first time in his marriage and he is left home alone coping with two unruly adolescents during a series of domestic crises whilst at the same time being crippled with self-doubt over his worth as a historian and the book he has been writing for years.

Two years later The Wife’s Story was published as A Fairly Conventional Woman. Brenda, who has found recent success as a prize winning quilt maker is travelling alone to Philadelphia to a Quilter’s convention. During her week away she attends a variety of workshops on quilt making, makes new friends and meets a man who she visits in his room on her first night away. She finds herself grappling with an array of emotions as she considers the possibility of an affair whilst reflecting on her both her marriage to Jack and her two teenage children who no longer need her.

Interestingly, in the same way that Jack has his unfinished book, Brenda has an unfinished quilt which does rather bring me back full circle to my two remaining unfinished quilts. But somehow without any doubt we know Brenda will get hers finished. I think the rate at which mine get finished or not may depend rather a lot on the weather because the garden and allotment are beckoning.