My Pink Quilt was eluding me. Each time I think I know what it needs, when I look at it again it feels wrong.
This morning I woke up thinking about it, questioning if it would work at all. Every time I looked at it or pictured it, it brought to mind Federalist Architecture or Federalist design in general. Like those rectangle creme filled chocolates, delicately embossed, fine lined, a bit too stuffy and symmetrical.
Not that I don’t appreciate the Federalist Movement, or like what I had done with the quilt so far. It just wasn’t everything I was feeling. It wasn’t the direction I wanted the quilt to go.
More pinks were too soft, blacks and grays were too serious. Then I found a swatch of fabric I had pieced together that was left from an earlier quilt. After that came the, flying geese, butterflies and cats. They all picked up the pinks, greens, grays and browns from the piece of fabric at the center of the quilt.
They could take the quilt in another direction.
Even though didn’t want it to be the whole quilt, there was something in the feeling of the Federalist style that made me create it in the first place. And it came to me as I looked at it juxtaposed to the cats, geese and butterflies.
Before starting the quilt I’d read two letters written by Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams. The first written in 1776 is asking him to be mindful of including women when writing what would become the Constitution.
The second, from 1777, is a description of group of women (possibly hundreds) storming a warehouse where coffee, which was scarce at the time, was being stored. The man who owned it was selling the coffee at exorbitant prices which the women believed was unfair. Much to the surprise of the men watching, the woman forcibly took the keys for the warehouse from the owner and loaded the coffee onto their wagons taking it all.
This morning, using pink thread, I stitched the words from the letter that Abigail Adams wrote in 1776 onto the pink striped fabric on my quilt.
The letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams…..
“I long to hear that you have declared an Independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous to them than our ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to forment a rebellion , and will not hold ourselves bound by any law in which we have no voice or representation.” 31 March 1776
I have a high regard for Abigail Adams. She seems smart and level-headed, a good match for John Adams.
Back in the day, letter-writing was the major means of communication. No email, no telephones, no telegraph. Letter-writing — that was it.
I’m love reading people letters Donald. And Ilearned years ago about Abigail and John Adams letter to each other. How descriptive they were not only of their thoughts, but the physical things around them and their experiences. And for many women in the past, it was was their only way of writing. I used to write letters, but not anymore, now I sometimes think of my blog as letters.
Your ability to stitch in script is so lovely and amazing to me. I’m not sure I could write that beautifully with a pen!
I actually find it easier with the sewing machine LoisJean, I have to be more deliberate, I don’t have the patience to write nicely with a pen or pencil. :)