The shelter of fabric
I gravitate toward Jesus’ instructions to provide food. I tend to gloss over the verses about clothing.
Recently I watched the Netflix documentary The Quilters. The short film tells the story of men incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in Missouri who learn the craft of quilting. They make quilts for children in the foster care system. Their quilts are practical and beautiful, with attention to detail and with what seems like love mixed with repentance and hope sewn into the stitches.
I had been thinking about fabric, its shelter and its comfort, since attending a conference last fall. The theme was “unraveling” obsolete denominational processes and structures. The metaphor was both overplayed and not always entirely clear, but my imagination was captured by a keynote lecture that included some historical information about fabric. I knew so little about fabric, entirely taking it for granted. Now I notice it everywhere.
My experience with fabric began with frustrating and sometimes disastrous 4-H sewing projects. I’m left-handed, so the sewing machine and all sewing processes were the opposite of anything intuitive for me. My mother was a utilitarian seamstress who did not sew or work with fabric for fun. We were inevitably at odds when she was trying to help me finish a project for the county fair at the height of summer. I would have much rather been outdoors with friends than indoors at the sewing machine, and she would have much rather not been in the presence of her huffy and hurried teenage daughter. I ripped out plenty of seams and started many projects over. Some my mother simply finished herself.
