Quilting a legacy

New Crisis, The, Jul/Aug 1999 by Freeman, Roland L

I mentioned to Alice that Maya Angelou had told me that when she was having trouble writing a particular book, her mother told her "Nake this quilt and go and sit on it and you won't have those problems, it will be all right." I told her that I've come across a lot of folklore within my family and others about powers and quilts, and I asked her if she had had any such experiences.

Well ... other than to say that I feel just really good and protected and blessed, especially when I am under quilts made by my mother. But my feeling of power-because I feel myself to be in the Shaman tradition-comes from the making. The making of myself. It's the same tradition as sand painting, or carving-all of those things that people do. The power is partly about grounding yourself in something that is humble, something that is-that you can actually see take form through your own effort, and it's like seeing that you can change things and create through your own effort and in a way that you can see. This makes you realize that you also do that constantly in an unseen way. That is also the way that the world is created. There is a consciousness that is manifesting in things that you see around you. Even though you never see it, it's there. I feel really connected through the work that I do.

It is such a great experience to do this while writing a book, because, you know on days when you cannot move in the narrative, you can work on your quilt! There are days when the characters just don't want to come anyway. They are off doing something else in another world. You have your quilt and you can keep going, and so one faith leads the other-the faith that you can continue making this pattern in the quilt restores the faith that you may start moving, that you can continue in the unseen-which is to draw these characters out of nothing and make them real for someone.

I asked her if she had made a quilt for her daughter.

No. I'm sure that she will make her own quilt. I'll be happy to leave her these if they are not worn out, which they will probably be, but I hope that she will make quilts for her own grounding and her own connection to me and to her grandmother and to her great-grandmother. [I've seen] quilts that my grandmother made. They tended to be very serviceable, very heavy and really for warmth, and, well of course, beautiful. [My daughter has a quilt] that she travels with. It's just a beautiful simple quilt that she loves. I gave it to her because she just feels like you can't sleep under just any old thing. It's got to be something that is congenial with your dreams-your dream sense, your dreamtime. I'm trying to think of where I got it. I think that I just bought it somewhere. I believe it is from Texas.

I asked Alice what she'd like to say to people in general about quilting.

That they should learn to do it. That they should think less about collecting quilts and give more thought to making them. Because, really, that is the power. It may do all kinds of good things, too, to collect what others have made, but I think that it is essential that we know how to express, you know, our own sense of connection. And there is no better sense of understanding our own creation than to create, and so we should do that.