Africa Quilt

Six months into being a Peace Corps Volunteer I had begun to get quite a few bits and pieces of fabric because I was continuously getting new clothes made. My closet looked a rainbow on acid. The Beninese may not have much, but they do know how to wear clothes were the color and pattern don’t just speak politely to you, they scream at you. Everyone wears these types of clothing and it makes sense because it reflects the lives of the people, vibrant.

Now I had lots of little bits of fabric left over from trying to be a Beninese fashionista and they really didn’t add up to anything on their own. Then I had a great idea after seeing someone in my market had stitched together a lot of these little itty-bitty pieces and made a mix-fabric wrap skirt. At first I thought this was a great idea since tailors always had tons of left over little pieces. Then the thought hit me. I could make a quilt! This idea is far from original, there are many volunteers who have brought back fabric and made something amazing with it. But I figured that whatever fabric I bought I would cut up a few squares and then put them aside for when I got back.

And so the saga of the quilt began. I would bring home a large piece of fabric and lay it out and cut it. My cat Oose would lay on the piece as I was cutting and tracing. Such a cat. She laid on every single piece of fabric I cut. So now at the end of everything there is still cat hair in my quilt. She would lay on it, and purr away. She even taught some of her kittens this was a good idea. She made sure that a piece of her was going back to the states. She wouldn’t have made the trip, traveling made her very nervous. I honestly think she would have had a heart attack and died if I brought her on plane.

A few months later I decided on a pattern. I never purchased fabric to put specifically in my quilt, it always had a reason. I began to lay out the quilt and only got about ¼ of the way through when I realized that I couldn’t lay it out anymore in my tiny apartment. It just wasn’t going to happen. So I had to do a little math. I realized that I would have enough for a king size, and I wouldn’t have to use any piece more than twice. I also would have no solid colored pieces. Because I couldn’t lay the whole thing out before I got home, I knew that it might need a little tweaking. I tried to put the piece together to see how they might look, but I never got the whole picture of what I was doing until I got home.

I decided about half way through my service I would go home and spend some time up at the family camp (cabin on a lake). I knew I needed help to get the quilt off the ground. I’m not much of a seamstress and I made one quilt which failed miserably. I didn’t want this one to do the same. I’d worked so hard already and it was still in it’s infancy. I knew I needed to enlist the help of a very clever woman who knows about sewing and quilts, Aunt Monique.

Aunt Monique had once been a seamstress and it’s not that this woman just kind of follows the rules of sewing and fabric, she listened to what the cloth was telling her and she spoke to it. She’s done so much that she said ‘well you just have to know what it needs.’ Like any good artist, she knows her medium. I told her of my vision. I had the whole quilt cut, organized in piles, I told her how big it was going to be and she said ‘ok’. She then looked at the floor in camp and said ‘the only way we’re going to do this is if we lay it out and can see the pattern.’ And so we did. The quilt took up about ¾ of the floor space at camp. Keep in mind in the center of camp there is a woodstove, a large dining room table which seats 10-15. Also there were 4 dogs at camp. They were all asleep cuddled up on the couch we figured it was now or never. There would never be a time at camp where there weren’t dogs, where there wasn’t a time where there wasn’t a woodstove and a table, and laying it outside also wasn’t a possibility because of wind. By the time 80% of it was laid out we were under the table, under the stove, around the other furniture, and we also hadn’t disturbed any of the dogs. She said to me that my quilt if I used all the pieces it was going to be beyond a king sized and that I would have to specially order batting for it. So we stopped and I had extra pieces. At the end looking at it, it was going to be awesome, it didn’t need to change one bit. I was proud of myself. As we were picking it back up in and organized fashion my aunt says to me, ‘Do you know that there is a name for the pattern you chose?’ ‘No, what is the name?’ ‘Around the world.’

I went back to Benin for another year, and then came back the next September and began to work at the top to my quilt. Life was busy I was working at the local ski mountain and living at home. I worked on the top bit by bit, and when I got tired of it, I would put it away. I wanted to do it right and however long it was going to take me to finish it and do it the way it deserved to be, that’s how long it was going to take me. In April it’s tradition for our family to go to camp and celebrate the end of winter. Also we try to ‘open’ camp. Which means that we clean out the kitchen, check the level of firewood, and depending on the ice put the water line in. It had taken me most of the winter to do it, but I had gotten the top finished and bought the batting and the backing. We had also decided that we were going to tie the quilt. So in April of that year we set the quilt on the dining room table at camp and began to tie it. It needed a border and we decided to keep the same color as the back for the border. She told me that she would do the rest, it had been a lot of work to tie it, but it at least was in a place where it could sit and not fall apart.

Years went by. She took it with her to finish many places that she went but she didn’t find the time to do it. Other things came up and it just wasn’t destined to be done that day. I knew that we would finish it but, because I was transient I also didn’t want it with me everywhere I went. It was special and having it live in and out of my car wasn’t the place for it.

I recently have been at camp because my job ended in New Hampshire and my college hasn’t started up yet. It wasn’t enough time for me to get a summer gig so I’ve been more or less living here. Camp is definitely not a half way house, however, nobody was here using it. I couldn’t think of a better place to be for a few weeks. Aunt Monique came up and spent a few days this week with me, and with her she brought the quilt. It had been about 3 years since I’d seen it, and I was excited that it was going to be done.

We put the border on together, it involves small stiches, done by hand. With our fingers worn and bruised we finished it. I’m glad we were able to finish it together. We aren’t going to be able to spend a lot of time together in the next few years so it was good we had this time. We had lot of philosophical discussions, we both believe in auras and energies that the world brings, we talked about past lives and felt that we had always been close for many of the cycles of people. I saw Zues’s aura, and it was a light purple, we were visited by loons and hummingbirds, we watched the lake change from day to day. It was great. We finished the quilt and we hung it up at camp, and we both felt that it just was destined to be finished up here, together.

Looking at the quilt brought a tear to my eye. I loved Benin. All the little pieces brought back bits of information, I looked at it, as if it were a book or movie, peeling back forgotten memories and emotions. I miss Benin almost everyday. I wonder if life is still the same, frustrating but beautiful, political yet welcoming, challenging and rewarding. I know that if I go back I’ll probably end up disappointed and empty because I can’t just go back for a week and rediscover and do all the things I want. But now that I have a piece of my history in the form of a quilt, I can always go back and visit my Benin.