legends · 4 min read ·
Memory Quilt
A memory-quilt pattern leaves the maker finishing the last block herself.
**MEMORY QUILT — Pattern No. 8 (Log Cabin variation)**
*Finished size: 60 × 72 in. Skill level: intermediate. Time: 40 hours.*
**Materials.** 6 yards backing, 1 yard binding, batting, and **18 garments** from the person you wish to remember. Cotton shirts and dresses work best. Cut each garment into 2½-inch strips. Do not wash the cloth beforehand: wash will lose the scent.
**Method.**
1. Cut the garments into strips and sort by colour.
2. Begin each block with a centre square. This should be cut from the garment worn most. A cuff, a collar, the pocket.
3. Build outward in rounds, light strips on two sides, dark on the other two, until the block measures 12½ in.
4. Join 30 blocks.
5. Quilt by hand, using a perle cotton thread. *Stitch toward yourself.*
· · ·
**Maker's notes, Hilary Dunn**
**12 Sept.** My mother died in the spring. My sister said I should make the quilt, to keep something of her. I have taken eighteen of her dresses from the wardrobe. They still smell of her lavender water. I have not washed them.
**14 Sept.** Cutting is hard. The scissors go through her cardigan like a knife into bread. I cut slowly. I have laid the strips out on the floor of the spare room.
**16 Sept.** Block one is done. The centre square is the cuff of her blue dress, with the button. It looks well.
· · ·
**20 Sept.** Six blocks. At night I hear sewing, a quiet needle, in the spare room, when the machine is shut away. I thought it was the radiator. I looked in once, with the landing light behind me. The room was dark. The pile of strips on the floor was lower than I remembered.
**24 Sept.** Twelve blocks. I seem to have cut more strips than the dresses could provide. I've counted twenty-two garments' worth. I don't remember cutting that many.
**27 Sept.** Seventeen blocks. Last night I woke at three and went in. A block lay on the machine, half-finished. Not mine. The seams were finer than I can do. The centre square was cut from the same cloth as my own nightdress.
· · ·
**2 Oct.** Twenty-four blocks. I have not touched the machine in five days. I find blocks on the table each morning, finished, pressed, and neatly pinned in a stack. Each one has a centre square taken from something of mine: a sock, a scarf, the lining of my coat. I opened the wardrobe. The garments are gone. The wardrobe is full of the strips of them.
I should be afraid. I find I am not. When I look at the blocks I feel a wide calm, the calm of being known in detail. Every thread of me has been counted and set down in its right place.
**5 Oct.** Thirty blocks. The quilt is joined. It is beautiful. It lay folded on the bed this morning.
· · ·
**6 Oct.** It is a quilt of the whole of me. I turned it over, and examined the squares one at a time. They show my life: the school cardigan I wore at nine, the wedding dress, a shawl I had in my first winter here, the scarf I wore to the funeral. The garment I wore yesterday is there, in the corner, joined into the border.
The last block is not finished. It is the smallest, at the foot of the quilt, in the right-hand corner. The centre square is blank. A square of plain white lawn, no pattern, no colour, pinned. Around it, the rounds of strips are laid, in light and dark, laid out to be sewn.
**7 Oct.** The needle is threaded. It lies on the white square. It is a long one, a milliner's, with a loop of perle cotton, the colour of the shirt I am wearing.
· · ·
**8 Oct.** I have decided to finish the quilt myself. I think it is fair. I took the square in my hand. The needle slid in as if through water. I stitched toward myself, as the pattern says, and the thread drew tight.
I didn't feel the first stitch. I felt the second. It was a small pull under the ribs, like a hook. I looked down and saw that I was holding not the square but my own sleeve, and the stitch had gone through it, and through me, and out the other side, and was pulling gently, steadily, drawing the cloth of my arm into the border of the quilt.
It doesn't hurt. It is only very tight. It is only very neat.