Diamond in Disguise at Gee’s Bend

“I’ve never done this before”  Mary Ann said as she dumped a plastic bag of fabric scraps on her kitchen table and took a picture of them.  The photo of the  fabric already looked like a chaotic version of one of her quilts.  The shape of the scraps were similar to the shapes in her latest quilts.

Mary Ann discovered her creative time.  Jon always says we each have our creative time.  It’s when we do our best work.  It’s a sacred time, not to be compromised.  It’s now clear that Mary Ann’s creative time starts around 8pm.  After a nap, after cooking dinner and feeding the cats, after eating dinner and washing the dishes, after talking on the phone or to company…..then it’s Mary Ann’s fruitful time to work.

After seeing Mary Ann’s tiny quilt square I wanted one to bring home.  I knew that if I didn’t take one home with me I’d never get one.  Mary Ann has a green suitcase full of small quilt squares that are promised to people, some from over a year ago.  They are all unfinished and have a piece of loose leaf paper folded around them with someone’s name and address, sometimes a description of what to make the square into, or a price of how much the person wants to spend.

I didn’t  want to become a name and address in that suitcase.  So when Mary Ann didn’t get to work yesterday afternoon at the Gee’s Bend Collective, I saw my chances of getting one of her tiny quilt squares slipping away.  But by 7pm, when  she didn’t get the phone call that would let her know  there was Choir practice,  I saw her eyeing the plastic bag she filled that afternoon with my  fabric scraps.  I tried not to look too excited, I knew once she got started she wouldn’t be able to stop until it was done.  She emptied the bag onto the kitchen table.  It was a quilt, a  collage, an abstract painting.  She picked up the strip of  fabric with buttons on it from Jon’s shirt, moving it around on the table.  And when she looked at the clock and said we had to go visit her sister Julie, I wasn’t worried.  I knew Mary Ann would be coming back home and sewing, all those scraps rearranging themselves in her head as we drove to her sisters.

Then for the second night in a row, I watched her as she created.  One of the wonderful things about Mary Ann is her ability to change her mind.  If she sews it together and it doesn’t look right, she patiently gets her seam ripper and pulls it apart.  She’ll work sewing certain pieces together, getting them just right then cut the whole piece in half or thirds.  She’s an animated sewer, taking to herself and the fabric, commenting and congratulating herself when something looks really good. Singing along with the Gospel music on the radio, and holding out her arms, in a Ta-Da! moment,  as if presenting her creation to the whole world when she does something different that she’s really happy with.

And when she finished the piece she was happy and so was I.  She turned it round and round finding which side was up.  Then took a picture of it.  That’s when she saw the diamond shape it made. (she’s always seeing letters and numbers and objects in her abstract quilt designs.  One red and white quilt has a design that looks like R2D2, the robot from Star Wars.  She called that quilt Robot on the White House)  Diamond in disguise she said.  And that’s what it’s called.  Then she signed it and stamped it with the Gee’s Bend Stamp.

I left the rest of the fabric I brought with me for Mary Ann to use.  Pieces of Jon’s shirt and the old faded drapes.  She said she’s going to do a series  of tiny quilt squares using the fabric.  Maybe she’ll sell them at the Gee’s Bend Collective, maybe she’ll have an exhibit somewhere of tiny quilt squares.  I’m just  glad I got one for myself.  I knew that every time I look at it I’ll think of being in Mary Ann’s Kitchen, during her creative time, seeing a tiny quilt square being born.