I moved into my first apartment while my mom was battling cancer, and once she was no longer confined to her bed, she asked if I wanted her quilt. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at this thing again without remembering being sick,” she told me. I gladly took it. Even though I wasn’t yet living a zero waste lifestyle, I also wasn’t making a lot of money and took any freebie offered, especially if it smacked of family heirloom.
The quilt was not the kind I would buy if left to my own devices (orange isn’t a color I gravitate toward), but it was beautiful. Its ombre suggested a sunset with stitches that created long horizontal lines that made my bed look bigger than it was. My mom loves bright colors in the ROY part of the rainbow, so I also loved that it reminded me of her.
As with all secondhand manufactured items made of fabric, time and wear does a number on their structural integrity. For the most part, I ignored the little nicks that appeared. They were barely noticeable and none of the batting was falling out.
Enter a new member of the family: Luna the Cat. Luna has a permanent limp in one leg, a kittenhood injury from before we adopted her. As a result, she can no longer retract her claws in that paw and they regularly get caught on any fabric she comes into contact with. My quilt with its time worn threads didn’t stand a chance. Tears appeared in her wake, with batting falling out behind.
Around the start of the pandemic, the quilt started to look more ratty than cozy. But we had just moved across the country from our community of friends in Seattle and I refused to throw out a quilt with so many ties to my past. Anyway, we couldn’t afford a new one.
Luckily, sentimental fool that I am, I’ve always struggled with the decluttering sagas that fill other zero waste influencers’ TikTok and YouTube channels. That’s why I still had the first dress I ever made in one of our moving boxes. It hadn’t fit me in years, and it was of a cut and color that would send it straight to the landfill should I attempt to donate it. I began to cut.
I kept my initial repair simple: I cut squares out of clothes Nathan and I didn’t need anymore that fell into the red-orange-yellow spectrum. I top stitched the patches onto the quilt by hand with red cotton thread. At times I fudged the rules, adding random colors or designed patches I picked up at art fairs, and over the years the quilt went through ugly periods and beautiful periods as I attempted to balance the laissez-faire design. Eventually Nathan and I bought few new bed spreads and comforters for our room and the quilt moved into the guest room. Now I have a conversation piece visitors can ask me about, and I’ll admit I think of them as I work on the bohemian-chic monstrosity in our slower months. It now tells the story of our lives together, as well as being a gift from my mom.
Long story short: life and Luna continue to damage the quilt and I continue to repair it. It’s one of the biggest pieces of art I’ve ever made, and I couldn’t be prouder of it.
Even if it is an eternal work-in progress.
In case you missed it: Read how I started fixing my broken things