Episode 01: My Quilting Origin Story

Hello and welcome to the Hand Quilted Podcast. I’m Taniya Barrows, a hand quilter attempting to stitch my own path through a machine quilted world. I’m also a creative writer who loves to tell stories. With this podcast I am piecing together these two passions of mine and sharing my hand quilting projects, misadventures, and life lessons learned one stitch at a time. I invite you to grab your needle, thread, and thimble, and join me on my hand quilting journey.

Episode 1: My Quilting Origin Story

It wasn’t the first time I held a needle, nor was it my first quilting effort, but it was the moment my quilting journey began all the same. It happened one evening in the fall of 2014. I was sitting on the couch in our living room, watching TV with my family, when I suddenly turned to my husband and declared, “Okay honey, I’ve got it! I’m going to try quilting and yoga!” To which my incredibly supportive husband simply replied with an enthusiastic, “Okay!”

This happened at a moment in my life when I needed a change, but I didn’t know what kind of change I needed. It was the kind of moment that comes in the wake of devastation, grief, and rejection. A little over a month earlier, I had suffered a sudden loss that utterly destroyed me, but it wasn’t the kind of loss that is often spoken of, or even acknowledged as significant within our cultural references, which only increased my isolation in the moment, and the magnitude of my emotional devastation. I’m not going to go into the details of my loss because they aren’t necessary. Aside from the fact that it happened and therefore I was devastated, none of those details pertain to my quilting story. My quilting story is all about the aftermath of my loss, because even though nobody died, and my marriage and family were strong and healthy, my heart had still been ripped apart and shattered, and a lot like Humpty Dumpty, I had no idea how to put myself back together again, but I was trying.

My husband knew how deeply I had been hurt, and how badly I was suffering. He also knew how hard I was struggling to climb my way out of that horrific, emotional crater that had consumed me. Unfortunately, as is the way with these things, he couldn’t make everything better himself. All he could really do was be there for me; supporting me in whatever I wanted to try, even if that meant he would need to assume all the kid duties a few nights a week, or simply resist the urge to ask how much that pile of fabric cost.

I’m happy to say that quilting ended up being the key to making things better. Due to simple logistics, it was the first part of my make-things-better plan that I tried. After all, it was easier and more convenient to hop in my car and head over to my local quilt shop the very next morning than it was to find a local yoga class that even kind of fit into our family schedule. Sadly, a decade on, I still haven’t found that yoga class, but I have completed four hand quilted quilts, with my fifth - and largest - nearing completion, and a sixth recently, and hastily, started just for me.

While I may have found a desire and motivation to learn how to quilt that fateful fall evening in 2014, that doesn’t mean I had any history or real connection to the craft before then. The closest I ever came was working with a colleague who happened to be a quilter. I’m honored to say that just before I left that job she and I shared, she gifted my husband and me a small quilt she made for us as a baby shower gift right before our middle son was born. Aside from that, I’d only had a couple of other tangential quilting encounters in my life, none of which would have taught me anything about the fundamentals of quilt making. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to figure it out on my own.

The best of circumstances may have had me jumping straight into a beginner’s quilting class, or possibly seeking out new friends at my local quilt shop, or even reaching out to that former colleague of mine whom I had lost touch with over the years. But to do any of that, I needed to be in a much stronger, more socially compatible state. Instead, when I started my quilting journey, I was too hurt, and too emotionally broken to put myself out in any sort of social manner. I sought the act and craft of quilting because I could do it at home, alone, safely curled up on my couch. Had I managed to find that yoga class, I’m confident it would have been a good fit because while it would have gotten me out of the house and into the world with other people around, it’s also an activity that is intended to draw your focus inward and calm the mind, not spend a whole hour chatting and socializing. It would have been okay for me to simply be quiet and present in a yoga class, but seeking a quilting tutor or mentor would have required a lot more social interaction than I was ready to engage in at the time.

Thankfully, I wasn’t starting entirely from scratch. As a young child, my mom had taught me how to sew using a needle and thread, and how to use that needle to make a quilters knot at the end of my thread. I don’t remember why, or what kind of project or task brought about the need or opportunity to teach me this, but I’ve never forgotten it, and have always been grateful for the knowledge. I’ve found it to be a useful life skill I’ve used many times throughout the years. I also benefited from having taken my middle school’s “Cooking and Sewing” elective class in the eighth grade. Thanks to my incredible teacher, Mrs. Garrigues, I learned key sewing fundamentals such as, how to thread and operate a sewing machine, how to wind and load a bobbin, what the hell a bobbin is, and - most importantly - how to sew a straight line. We did lots of different kinds of projects in Mrs. Garrigues’s class that year, but they were all either garment or pillow making related. Thankfully, those bare basics she taught us stayed with me over the decades, and would became the foundation of my quilting skills.

Also, I had tried a couple of quilt making attempts a few years earlier, but both of those efforts left me disillusioned and frustrated. Although, I do have to admit that first effort of mine did produce something my kids love. It was from a kit I bought from a large fabric and craft retailer that was labeled as everything you needed to make a baby quilt, and I guess it falls under a technical definition of a quilt with a top, a back, a something sandwiched in between, and then it was run through my sewing machine to sew all three layers together, but I still attest that that thing was more of a pillow and less of a quilt. Yet, it is a testament to the love infused into the things we make. My kids still love it to this day because mom made it, and I tolerate its presence because my kids love it.

Okay, so, I know what you’re thinking: I’ve identified myself as a hand quilter, and I’ve even titled this podcast “Hand Quilted,” yet here I am talking about sewing machines and bobbins and machine quilting that pillow-like-quilt-thing. What gives, Taniya?

Yeah, I know, but we all start somewhere, and I started with a sewing machine. In fact, I still use my sewing machine. I do prefer to machine piece most of my quilt tops because it means my quilts make it to that ready-to-be-quilted state faster. I am working on a very special forest and flower themed EPP quilt (that stands for English Paper Piecing, but the way) that I am attempting to do entirely by hand, but that’s an ongoing story I’m sure I will be sharing about many times in the coming years before that quilt is finished. Anyhow, generally speaking, my thimble comes out once I’ve fully completed the assembly of the whole quilt sandwich, meaning I’m ready to start the actual quilting step. I will then happily spend the next few years with my needle, thread, and thimble hand quilting away. The reality is, I am a quilter primarily so that I can spend my time working on this penultimate step in the quilt making process (the binding being the final step). For me, spending my time rocking my little needle back and forth, guiding it up and down through those three layers of fabric and material, and following a pattern that I hope will result in highlighting the beauty of the quilt top I made, became the secret to stitching my heart back together when I was in that deep, dark place of hurt.

But alas, to fully bridge that divide between my sewing machine and thimble I must make a bit of a confession that may get a few of my fellow bibliophiles who love to stay true to the source material a little perturbed, but hang in there with me friends, and let me explain!

When I started quilting, I didn’t have a full understanding of how one went about making a quilt, nor did I have a guide or mentor to help me sort any of it out. All I really had were assumptions and fantasies about sewing that I kind of semi-erroneously attributed to the March sisters, Jane Eyre and her few friends, and even to the Bennet sisters, believe it or not. I know quilting wasn’t featured in the plot lines of any of their stories, but all the same, I had these images in my head that were inspired by books like *Little Women*, *Jane Eyre,* and *Pride and Prejudice,* where women would pass their pre-televised-computerized-smart-phone-filled hours by sewing a garment, or darning a sock, or working on some kind of needlework project secured in a hoop, and I thought that sounded like a lovely way to spend ones time. Okay, maybe not the darning of socks part, but the always having some kind of stitching project at hand that could be picked up or turned to in the quiet of the evening, or to seek solace under when life gets hard or complicated or overwhelming.

Yeah, I know that’s a rather romanticized view of sewing, quilting, or any kind of needlework fictionally done in ages past, but in that hard, complicated, overwhelming moment in my life, I needed that romanticized filter. I needed that image in my head of a woman just like me peacefully sitting in a favorite corner and stitching away at some big piece of fabric in her lap. In my grief and devastation, that sounded cozy and warm and safe.

So, I began to quilt. As I stumbled my way through the piecing, layering, and basting of my first quilt, and then learning how to bury my knots and make something resembling evenly spaced quilting stitches, I began to find genuine solace in the peaceful, meditative, repetitive nature of making each of those hand quilted stitches. It took time, practice, and an unexpected comment from a quilt shop owner that gave me permission to be my own quilter, and to quilt in the manner that worked best for me, before I could fully settle into my thimble, but once I did I’ve never looked back!

The unexpected part of all of this quilting, has been the life lessons and patchwork metaphors I’ve discovered along the way. It sounds cheesy and corny and as cliche as you can get, I know, but it has also been undeniable. I started quilting as a busy mom with young kids, which meant there was very little space in any of my days for a time consuming activity like quilting. Thankfully, my purpose for picking up my needle was to focus on making each of those little stitches and had nothing to do with finishing anything quickly, but I was always surprised (and I still am) by how much progress is made with a whole bunch of short quilting sessions. Slow and steady really does win the race even when you’re taking it one step - and one stitch - at a time!

As a creative writer, this discovery spoke to me on all of those literary and metaphorical levels my college professors trained me to appreciate, and I’ve sought to *stitch* them into my writing wherever I can. (You see what I did there? Sorry, couldn’t resist!) Anyway, a couple of years ago it occurred to me that I could venture away from my fiction writing comfort zone and stretch myself within the realm of memoir by writing about my quilts, my quilting journey, and all of these life lessons I keep stumbling upon. At first, I thought I’d share my stories in blog form, because I believe any story about quilting should include pictures, but as an avid podcast listener, and an aspiring podcaster who got derailed because of the pandemic, I reconsidered and the *Hand Quilted* *Podcast* was born! Never fear, I still have a website you can visit to see all of those quilting pictures.

Stretching myself as a writer wasn’t my only motivation to share my hand quilting journey. I also wanted to work on this writing and podcasting project because, as a hand quilter, I have struggled to find my hand quilting community. All of the quilters I know are dedicated machine quilters. I love all of my quilting friends, and I’m even lucky enough to have a couple of very special quilting sisters I connect with monthly to work on a shared project together, but being the lone hand quilter among them can get a bit lonely at times.

Hand quilting brings a pace and relationship to quilting that is different when you remove the sewing machine. Let me be clear, hand quilting is not better than machine quilting, it’s simply different. It comes with different tools, different stitches, different needs, and a different focus than what machine quilting calls for. Because of this, not having someone I can share my hand quilting observations or experiences or questions with can be isolating even when I’m surrounded by the love and camaraderie that can be found within just about any quilting circle.

There’s also all of those, “Wow, I could never do that!” kind of comments I get whenever I take my hand quilting out into the world. I understand the sentiment and surprise at seeing me do something so few people do anymore, and I appreciate the admiration that usually follows, but over the years I’ve begun to feel the weight of those comments. After almost a decade of hand quilting out in the world, I have yet to encounter anyone who has come up to me to tell me that they *also* hand quilt. Instead, the vast majority of the comments I get relate to disbelief over what I’m doing, an insistence that they could never possibly do it themselves, and a hyper focus on the number of hours I must have spent working on whatever project I happen to have in my lap. While I understand that these comments are being said through a moment of shock and surprise, and that we as humans aren’t always fabulous about filtering our comments said in a moment of shock and surprise, after hearing them for the better part of a decade, these comments have begun to feel isolating and othering, and have left me feeling completely misunderstood, especially when somebody attempts to estimate how many hundreds of hours I must have already spent working on a quilt.

It’s not about keeping track of the time, and it’s not about doing the impossible or unfathomable. As I’ve already shared, when I hand quilt it’s about healing and comfort and security. I would love to add community to that list, and so here I am, sharing my journey in hopes of countering all of the disbelievers and time keepers, and maybe inspiring a new hand quilter or two. I have no delusions that this little, independently produced podcast of mine will change the world and bring upon a giant wave of hand quilting, but you never know. I am hoping that whatever size ripple I can make, it will bring about a deeper appreciation, and maybe even a bit of inspiration, for this incredible craft of hand quilting.

Thank you for joining me and sharing my hand quilting journey. The Hand Quilted Podcast is written, recorded, and produced by me, Taniya Barrows, with music by Craig Riley, and logo design by Shelly Mullin. If you would like to see pictures of that pillow-like-quilt-thing my kids love so much, you can find them on my website at www.handquiltedpodcast.com. While there, you can also find a transcript of today’s show, and sign up for the mailing list I use to announce new episodes, new seasons, and the occasional new quilting related misadventure.

To see what I’m currently working on you can follow me on Instagram @handquilted, and on Facebook @HandQuiltedPodcast.

If you’d like to support the show you can do so by subscribing through whichever podcasting platform you use, sharing the podcast with your friends, or by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/HandQuilted. All of my paid patrons can get early access to new episodes.

And before I go, I’d like to thank my very first Patreon supporter: Patti Wohlin, who also happens to be my mom. Thanks mom!

The front of that pillow-like-quilit-thing my kids love so much.

The back of that pillow-like-quilt-thing my kids love so much.