Lessons Learned While Mending

A few years ago I bought a cotton quilt (cotton batting covered in cotton broadcloth) for us to use during the summer. Truth be told, we use this quilt year round because my husband likes sleeping under a big pile of blankets.

A week or so ago I realized that there was a big tear in the quilt about an inch from the edge.

about four feet's worth of tear. If my mother owned this quilt she would have tossed it. My husband always sees the good side in people and also in objects. Why should one toss something that is nearly good? I live with my husband and not with my late mother so I knew that I needed to come up with a way to mend this quilt.

My husband has lived with me for a long, long time so he suggested that I fix the tear using my serger or perhaps machine stitch the tear to a long strip of cotton. Neither one is a bad suggestion. I have been doing a whole lot of mending these days and I have come to learn that aside from fixing a tear mending needs to not be so strong as to casue further damage to the textile. The other thing I was thinking about is how heavy a queen sized quilt is to manage under a sewing machine.

I wasn't thinking about the mend non stop over the past several days, but thoughts about how to manage the fix have been running throuh my head like an ear worm. Today, I realized that probably the easiest way to tackle the mend was while the quilt was in place on our bed and to do the task by hand.

I put on a podcast, got a needle, a spool of thread and a pair of scissors and got to work.

Mending is boring work.With a long tear like the one I was facingI needed to keep praising myself in my head, reminding myself how far I had gotten. I listen to the podcast and saw that I had mended a hand's breadth ( that's about four inches).

In the Bible things are measured by cubits, the length from fingertip to elbow. We were taught that a cubit is 18 inches. I got a cubit sewn up. I just measured by fingertip to elbow longth and it is 16.5 inches. There was progress.

I thought about how folk tales so often have the hero complete a long and boring task. Well, ancient life was full of long and boring tasks. Come to think of it, so is modern life.

Anyway, as I worked, I noticed that the mend didn't change the hand of the quilt. You don't feel the stitching, there isn't a lump where the mend is.

I kept encouraging myself to keep going, even when I felt like quitting for the day. After forty nine minutes, the task was completed. If you look closely you can see the mending stitches. You don't feel the mend when you use the quilt.

The mend should hold long enough for me to figure out what our next summer quilt will be.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

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sarah in nyc

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