The Story of the (First) Sea Turtle Quilt

December 2024

                  It was sometime in November I when I came across the terrapin Grateful Dead fabric in the clearance rack at JoAnn’s, a place passes for a fabric store here in my neighborhood. Some voice in my head—Squishy the sea turtle—told me to buy all of it and to make a quilt for Bill and Tina. “Bill loves the Dead,” the voice said. Bill gave you the Terrapin Station sticker for your car, the only sticker you have placed on the Bus since the Pegasus sticker in the late 70’s”. “Hawaiian fabrics call to mind Bill’s shirts, and Bill and Tina have a special connection to that place,” the voice said.  Above all, the voice said: “You can make a sea turtle quilt.”

                  OK. I had made at this point one or two “quilts,” basically fabric covers for blankets Harold the Terrible Dog had eaten holes in. One I had even pieced (albeit a rudimentary pattern) and quilted the seams, but an actual quilt? I wasn’t sure. My mother was once a seamstress extraordinaire, and my Aunt Vicky was a quilter, but I had pieced a sailboat quilt for a friend’s child once in the 90’s, a child and friends I no longer remember, then I got flummoxed with the backing and binding, and somewhere in my Mom’s shed of fabric, that pieced quilt still exists, but I never finished it. It should be plain: I was not a quilter.

                  But I did have a ton of extra fabric, in the sense that my dog has eaten every blanket and bed spread in the house. I was happy to be using up all the blankets that Harold has eaten over the years. I don’t know why he likes to eat tiny, perfect wholes in bedspreads, blankets, anything fabric, but he does. He also eats furniture. Really. However, I am big fan of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and Harold has certainly given me ample opportunity for that. Today I a bit brighter when I see he has chewed out yet another perfect circle in a blanket, for now I see an opportunity there.  

                  So, a sea turtle quilt. Well, certainly I had sea turtle fabric, and lots of fabric strips in ocean colors, but time, well, there was no time. I was teaching 5 classes, and then I found out I had cancer. Oddly, this was what moved me to piece and sew the quilt. I started cutting pieces on December 16^th, and by December 20^th, I had the whole thing laid out and sewn together. I had the backing of the terrapin Grateful Dead fabric ready to go.

                  I want to make it clear here that I didn’t know what I was doing exactly. I made squares of squares, some log cabin squares with sea turtles in the middle and cut some big squares. Eventually, I laid it all out on the bed, and still feeling my way through the process, I stitched it all together. “This is a learning quilt,” I told myself, and gave myself the freedom to learn and make mistakes, of which I made many. Even today that quilt has at least two upside down sea turtles—and who can tell? except that the coral in the background is facing the wrong way. I also kept telling myself that handmade things may have flaws, and this is a good thing because it shows that they are handmade.

                  During this piecing time, I was also finishing my grading, getting ready for various and awful medical tests, and always preparing for my third biopsy surgery on December 25^th, which the surgeon had helpfully promised would be painful. “Just keep sewing,” I thought as we dragged our bedraggled live Christmas trees inside, decorated and hung lights. Finally, finally, it was time to start quilting the quilt.

                  I had never really hand quilted anything in my life, and at first my finger was bleeding from the needle, but then I wrapped in in gaffers’ tape (thanks, Bill) and went on. Robert ordered me a leather thimble to quilt, and I persevered. It was weird and slow but oddly satisfying to see one square after another emerge from my needle and thread.

                  One thing I learned about hand quilting was that it is truly a labor of love. A machine can do this thing! Faster ! Better! But for quilts, you need a giant freearm machine, which I have no space for. For me, with this quilt, it wasn’t that. I was so upset about my diagnosis, the election…I needed to stab something over and over and over. And yet that is not the whole thing, for I also found myself repeating my personal mantras as I hand-quilted, and I found myself thinking of Bill and Tina and all they mean to me, and I found myself infusing each stitch with the love I have for them. But also, if you are frustrated by life or elections, stabbing fabric over and over and over is not a bad way to deal with it.

                  It was also a great way for me to deal with the diagnosis. “Be in the moment,” I knew, but when I was waiting for test results or freaking out, the quilt was the thing that grounded me. “I can’t think about that now,” I would tell myself. “I will just think about this one seam, this one stitch, this one square.” And so it was: I waited, had tests, got good news from my MRI and CT scan and blood work, but every night, I returned to the couch, to the one stitch, one seam, one square. I had never heard of quilting as a Zen thing, or as an intentional act, but then there it was in my life. “I just need to sew a bunch of tiny stitches around this sea turtle,” I told myself, and so it was. In this fashion I progressed day by day, and still the quilt progressed, but it was not done.

                  Christmas Eve was my last food, as I was fasting before surgery the day after Christmas, and still, the quilt was not done. I got up at 6 on Christmas and started sewing. Those last squares were the most annoying of all: the thread breaking, the needle bending, the last square to sew with the 8 count them 8 turtles that needed to be outlined in tiny stitches, but at the end, at 12:00 pm, I finished the quilt. I hurried to have Robert take a picture, which Squishy insisted on being in (and you can see my earlier bed quilt under that) and then we drove off to deliver gifts. Bill and Tina were surprised I think to get the quilt, but I was so happy to give it to them. As we drive home through Griffith Park at sunset, I was filled with gratitude and fear, the gratitude for what the quilt had taught me and for the friends I have in my created family, and the fear of the surgery. I could also hear a certain voice saying I could make more sea turtle quilts for other friends, and this is where I am today.

                  I feel a bit like I am now working for a certain sea turtle, but I have cut, pieced, sewn and started quilting the second quilt, and I have supplies for quilts three and four. I don’t know if I will finish all of these, for whoever knows, but what I do know is I will just keep sewing, stitch by stitch, seam by seam, square by square as I navigate the coming months, and I hope to post more finished quilts, the Universe willing.

                  I thank my wonderful husband, for always telling me to buy whatever I want at the fabric store, my horrible dog Harold for eating blankets and sending me on this journey, and all my dear family and friends for the support at this difficult time.  ABQ, I say: always be quilting! And “she who dies with the most fabric wins,” author unknown, but true that.

Squishy with his first quilt