Shutter Sisters

sewing room

By

My mother is a quilter. She’s a founder of bees and guilds and she speaks at conferences and teaches and retreats and shows at galleries and inventories antique textiles and for as long as I can remember, people have leaned in to her work and said, “Oh- my- gosh. Those are the smallest stitches I’ve ever seen.”

I don’t have the patience gene, and so I’m not a quilter. But I can appreciate what makes a good one. Colour composition and design. The pepper that punctuates colours that cooperate – an unexpected brightness that pops, used sparingly and intentionally. The accuracy of piecework, points that meet all crisp and sharp, flat fabric origami. The hang of a well-made piece, straight and true. And the heft of it, pressing you into the bed on a night when the wind whistles through window seams.

I’m the only one left without a website, she said, cringing. Quilt Canada’s coming up and there’s nothing for me to link to. Can you help?

We started with an afternoon in her sewing room, a place I’ve hung out in since she started paying me a penny a pin. I’d crawl around at her feet running my hands across the wood planks, watching for flashes of silver while the machine thrummed along, piles of fabric collecting at her feet, her fingers easing it through. Picking up needles and straight pins, flat-headed pins, ball-headed pins, basters. Watching her with the rotary cutter, her hoops for hand-piecing. There were no pins this time, and no pennies. But captures of her space, her cherished things. Oh, the dust… she fusses, seeing how close I am. I insist she doesn’t touch a thing. The dust is soaked in with the pleasure of making beautiful, useful things. That makes it, to me, beautiful and useful dust.

Do you have a sacred space? A kitchen, an office, a crafting table? Today, show us a piece of it, just as it is, yours or someone else’s – creativity’s home in still life.

Comments

  4. Oh..I just love this. My mother's a quilter too. This has inspired me to photograph her space – just as it is. And – I have to agree with Meredith. You've created a visual quilt here. Wonderful post!

  6. I agree that this is an amazing quilt of images! just lovely, a place that I would find so inviting to spend time in … I'm sure your mom was so happy that you took these photos for her.

  8. This takes me back to my grandmother's sewing room. She was a seamstress in Pasadena for as long as I can remember. She is gone now but I remember how I loved to sit with her in her "office" while she worked. I can clearly see the walls with the the ivy that grew through cracks of their own they made, winding around the boards of thread spools. The sun shining in from the high windows…I would love to go back and capture this with my cameras. How wonderful that you can do this for your mother. The dust is beautiful!

  9. My mom's a quilter, too, so was my grandmother. I sew, but not quilts (like you, i have no patience) I'd love to see your mom's website to pass along to my mom.

  19. Such a wonderful surprise to see my "sewing office" (as Evan calls it) here on Shutter Sisters". I am honoured to be here and honored to be SweetSalty Kate's Mom. Come visit my blog and see what Kate has designed for me. It is still a work in progress but I'm learning.

  22. i wish i had a sacred sewing space (i'm a quilter, also a sewer, also a crafter, etc), but currently it looks like this:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilybeth29/3877355024/

    this is the place where everything is okay–or if it's not okay, at least it's okay to grieve things here. bed found by my mom at an estate sale, file cabinet/table and lamp made by grandpa, quilt made by my aunt:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilybeth29/5186018487/in/set-72157608993525565
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilybeth29/3217611474/