Ironing

This is another one of those "little slice of my life" posts.

I was ironing off some quilt fabric today. And I realized why I enjoy it - for one thing, ironing "simple" stuff (where there aren't collars or buttons you have to worry about) is easy and, on a cool day, kind of pleasant. Meditative.

I also realized that it reminds me a bit of ironing my dad's handkerchiefs when I was a kid. This is how a lot of girls first "learned" to iron - maybe that's not done any more, I don't know. I've read references to having little girls iron handkerchiefs in books from the 30s through the 50s and I wonder sometimes if this is just another way that I was sort of a generation to a generation-and-a-half behind some of my friends - a lot of the things I was into, a lot of the things I learned to do, seemed to be stuff that my friends and their families seemed to regard as obsolete. (Of course, it also might have been a function of being an academic family in a town full of, mostly, executives and small-business owners, and of having parents who, if they hadn't exactly KNOWN poverty growing up, had certainly heard it rattling the doorknob.)

I also had friends who, when they expressed a desire to learn to sew or crochet or something, their moms were like, "Why do you want to do THAT?" as if they were wasting their time, or setting the women's movement back 30 years (and that's not just my imagination; I've read other people who have said that some of the more feministy moms in the 70s didn't want their daughters to learn to cook or sew, thinking that somehow made them more "independent." Well, I can cook - and cook darn well, if I say so myself - and I can say I'm "independent." I'm certainly "independent" of having to depend on carry-out or frozen dinners...)

But I do think my being a little out-of-step with my generation cohort may be a function of the fact that the three generations of my mom's family (me, her, and her mother) span back over 100 years - my grandmother was born in 1897, "during the Spanish-American War" as she used to say. She grew up on a farm and married to get off the farm - her husband was an accountant in the lumber camps and from what my mom's said, there was never a whole lot of money, but they made do.

My mom was a late-in-life baby. She was born in...well, heck, she doesn't read this and I don't think she'd be offended if I reveal it, but she was born in 1936.

Yup, my mom is the same age as "too old to run" McCain. (Which is why I give a pretty hostile stare to anyone who makes old jokes about McCain. Say what you will about the man's policies, or temper, or whatever - but don't dismiss him solely because he's the age he is. My mom could run the country (though I know she would never WANT to) without her age being a factor (and she could probably do a damn sight better at running it than some folks who have tried for the office, and possibly a damn sight better than some folks who've actually HELD the office).)

And I was a late-in-life baby (well, not by today's standards, for sure. My mom once remarked, I think, that she was irritated by one of the doctors branding her a "geriatric mother" because she was over 30 when she had her first baby).

So sometimes I think the reason I'm less technologically plugged-in than some of my peers, the reason I like swing music and doo-wop more than most of what passed for Top 40 when I was a teen* may be because of my family background. (I also adore classical music - and am enough of an aficionado to want to say "classical sensu lato there - because my parents always had Mozart or Beethoven records playing in the house, and I used to listen to "Adventures in Good Music" with my dad).

(*though that might just be because I have better taste. [joking, not dissing anyone who likes mid-80s pop...])

Anyway. Back to the quilting. One thing I'm wanting to do this fall is go through some of my fabric "stash." (and wow, do I have a LOT of fabric. I've been buying it for nearly 20 years - I've been a "for reals" quilter since 1990 or so, and even as an impoverished grad student would by a half yard now and then just because I liked it and it made me happy). And I want to organize a lot of the fabric I have into groups based on fabrics I want to use together.

I have lots and lots of different color combinations. One of the reasons I enjoy quilting is the opportunity to play with color and pattern. It's my artistic outlet. I have a colleague who writes short stories and poetry (I think he's even had a few published) and who is working on a novel...I've told him the quilts are like my poems; I just need to express myself some way that is non-verbal.

I have fabric from a lot of different "lines." For people who aren't quilters - there are a number of different fabric companies out there (Moda is one of my personal favorites). They have different "lines" that are made by designers - for example, Mary Engelbreit will design a "line" based on her illustrations - they will all go together, will all have similar colors and be of a similar style.

The good thing about using fabric from the same "line" is you know it will all work together well. The not-so-good thing, in some cases, is that it's very "matchy" (it can make a quilt look almost too "commercially made") and sometimes the fabric colors don't contrast well. So I usually use fabric from a couple different "lines" in a quilt, it makes it more interesting to me. And sometimes I will find two fabrics I bought at different times and realize they look really good together, and that I want to use them together - which is part of the purpose of the sorting and stacking this weekend; I want to line up some projects where the fabric's all washed and ironed and ready and I can just start cutting when I figure out what pattern I want to use.

So I've been ironing off fabric and stacking it up. The part that made me think of ironing my dad's handkerchiefs is ironing the fat quarters. (For non-quilters: fabric comes by the yard. You can buy any increment; a yard would be 36" long by [typically] 40 to 44 inches wide. A half-yard then would be 18" by 42", a quarter-yard would be 9" by 42". Except quarter yards cut that way are long and skinny and hard to work with and they tangle up when you pre-wash them before sewing with them and they're just generally not as fun as fat quarters. A fat quarter is half of a half-yard - that is, 18" by 20" to 22". There are dozens of patterns and a good number of books out there with patterns specifically designed for fat quarters. Most quilt shops have stacks and stacks of them - so you can buy fabric without having to wait to have it cut, if you just want little pieces for a scrap quilt or a fat quarter quilt).

So a fat quarter is not that different in size from the big handkerchiefs my dad used to carry (and still does, in fact). I used to iron them and fold them when I was a kid and was "helping" (under my mom's watchful eye and with the iron not set TOO high). I fold the fat quarters the same way today, which is what made me think of it.

Yeah, my dad carried handkerchiefs. The big plain white kind, some kind of fine fabric (lawn, I think) with a rolled hem and those little stripes that were worked in a heavier thread. (If you've seen the type I'm talking about, you know what I mean). He always had one. When I was a kid, if I had a sneezing fit or a crying jag, he'd quietly pull out the handkerchief and hand it to me. If I found a neat rock and I wanted to take it home, he'd wrap it up in his handkerchief for me. A few times as a young teenager, when I had little money for birthday or Christmas presents and couldn't think what to get him, I got him new handkerchiefs, and he used them, and I felt good about it, because I had picked a gift he actually could use.

So I smile as I iron and fold my fat quarters and think about that. And I'm grateful that I was a kid with a "good dad." And a "good mom," for that matter. (And I'm also grateful that I still have both my dad and mom.)