Now my oldest grandgirl turns eighteen. Laken. So quick. I was ready and not ready. One way I was prepared: her gift. I’d thought ahead and commissioned a lap quilt from the contemporary art quilter, Sarah Atlee .
I’ve followed Sarah before and after she turned from painting to abstract quilting. Sarah now invites ordinary patrons like me to commission a work. The first step of the commission is to engage in conversation and storytelling. Next, Sarah begins to interpret in color and shape the person or event to be honored or remembered within the design of the quilt.
But before I met with Sarah, I wanted to have a heart-to-heart with Laken. To keep it secret, I told her I had a poetry project that required listening to what young women had on their minds post-pandemic.
To put her at ease, I didn’t pose questions that might make her feel her privacy was at risk.
What is your favorite kind of weather? Oh, rainy days, for sure. Color? Green and sometimes pink. Think of a few people you love and what color each kind of love is? Blue, red, but sometimes red turns white.
Much of what Laken has learned as a girl, young woman now, comes from playing soccer. We talked a lot about that. How to be in the moment, fully in your body. The Flow. And the pleasure of trusting your teammates. I also asked, what made her sad about the world? Normalizing cruelty. To myself I said, the art of quilting is normalizing love. Loving the old traditional ways and creating new ways.
Some of this conversation stays private, but when I shared the gist with Sarah she seemed to catch the spirit of our Laken. She was ready to design and sew. She asked once if I wanted to see how it was developing. I said no. I trust her creative eye and hand and heart.
When Sarah delivered the quilt entitled In Flux, I was enchanted.
I hadn’t anticipated how much this work of art could also be a kind of guidebook. It seemed to say: mix your patterns, let rainy days bump up against bright ones, let your edges be funky, there’s more than one way to cut a corner, balance without rigidity, run every which way on the pitch, watch the sunset mix her colors, let life be messy and, sometimes, unmatched. Embrace surprise
On Thanksgiving surrounded by our (crazy quilt) family, Laken became the owner of a one-of-a-kind quilt which also comes with a pocket and dowel to display on a wall. Front or back, splayed or displayed, she has a new grown-up blankie. All of us who love her are just happy to to be near the beauty of her flow as she changes and makes the world a better place, one small patch at a time. There she goes, bravely in flux.
