Five After American Quilts, by Cindy Veach

Quilt and photo by Cindy Veach (USA) contemporary

​Dutch Elm & Live Pine
 
Bicentennial Great Quilt Contest, State of Minnesota Winning Entry
 
The materials: denim, variegated green corduroy (olive, sage, celadon,
             viridian, moss), gray twill, cotton batting. The tools: Mémé’s converted 
 
treadle (black with Singer’s gold lettering), needles, thread, 
             straight pins, tape measure, scissors. The terms: selvage, grain,
 
betweens, block, mitering, staystitching, piecing, setting,
             sashing, binding, template. The subject: Boundary waters
 
coniferous forests once white pine white pine white pine white pine.
             The subject: Dutch Elms that lined Northfield streets
 
tree tunnels I walked under to my job at the college 
             where I kissed a man not my husband, all the while 
 
the trees diseased, dying. The appliqué: crude, unrefined, edges 
             barely caught. I know every stitch I took, every fraying edge 
 
I tried to hide. The patchwork: to set off each single tree, each row of trees.
             To keep each thought separate, isolated. The quilting: nights 
 
after I crossed the line, I could not sleep. This quilt too large, 
             too thick to fit a frame so I lap quilted. 
 
My stitches weren’t fine, not showy. Not a delicate story.
             They had to cut the elms out of the sky. Those trees 
 
the only thing to love about that town. We quit it then, 
             drove west and west. The finishing: I was unsure of myself 
 
when it came to mitering corners, I pulled the lining over the top, 
             blind stitched the edges. After forty years they’re worn down. 
 
I can see the batting where it has lain. What if anything of that time remains 
             except this quilt where the partial narrative of a life is stitched?

Crazy Quilt, by Tamar Horton Harris North (USA) 1877

Regret
 
I wished to turn and look back... I did indeed have a sort of regret.
Grace Marks (Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood)
 
I should have bought that Crazy Quilt
from the gallery in Minneapolis
but that was decades ago now
 
and now I might not even love it
as I once loved Of Human Bondage
and reread thinking I should still love it
 
but I’m a stranger to that girl now
my heart evolved, hardened
as the hard-edged decades passed.
 
I still think of that quilt—ruby, sapphire,
emerald velvets, embroidered vines and
roses—I should have listened to my heart
 
my then heart my heart of then
and bought that quilt and carried
it with me through the decades.
 
That was before I took up the needle 
before I knew how to secret stitch.
I should have bought that Crazy Quilt
but that was decades ago now.
 

Log Cabin Quilt, by unknown artist (USA) 1875

​American Love Story
 
When I made my first log cabin quilt 
I believed in this pattern’s origin story
 
as I believed in my first marriage--
brave pioneer families, log homes on the prairie, 
 
red center square for the hearth, log like strips 
torn by hand, light values for the sunny side
 
dark for the shady side. Years later, when I learned 
that mummified cats found in Egyptian sarcophaguses 
 
were this pattern’s likely origin I had to ask myself 
if two histories could be true. Each cat swathed 
 
in linen strips that made perfect log cabin patterns: 
Sunshine and Shadow, Courthouse Steps, Housetops. 
 
Paws wrapped so tight each cat resembled a cylinder 
not unlike the cylindrical pots my first husband 
 
created from clay—tall, nonfunctional, grooved lines 
where his middle knuckle formed the stoneware walls. 
 
It was 1975. We were going to start a pottery, live 
off the land. At least that was the story I told myself
 
but any story could be a fabrication. And yet how we love 
a love story. And yet how we fail to excavate for truth. 
 
At the World Museum you can still see cat mummies. 
Signs say thousands were exported to Britain to America 
 
and crushed for farm fertilizer. I keep one of the pots he made. 
When I look at it up on the mantel, I see a cat mummy not my past.
 

Drunkard's Path Quilt, by Marie Miller (USA) contemporary

The Drunkard’s Path
 
After the newlyweds unwrapped my gift
the elders came over to examine, to praise my piecing, 
my hand quilting—ten stitches to the inch.
             Blue for water, white for purity—curved shapes
pieced to create the drunkard’s staggering path, perhaps
a woman’s vote for prohibition, perhaps another quilt myth.
             To break my curse, they chanted its other names:
Wonder of the World, Wanderer’s Path in the Wilderness, 
Double Wrench, Solomon’s Puzzle.

Star of Bethlehem Quilt, by unknown artist (USA) 1945

Lone Star
 
One central star 
six or eight points 
 
pieced from tiny fabric diamonds
star points working outward 
 
from the centre 
in colours selected and positioned
 
to create radiating rings. 
It takes great skill 
 
to piece this pattern 
named after a state 
 
that wants to build a wall, 
control bodies, rewrite history. 
 
All the diamonds must be cut
and stitched precisely, squares
 
and triangles framing the star
joined with Y seams.
 
If rushed, if shortcuts, 
the top will not lay flat
 
the centre will pucker
corners and borders
 
crooked, askew, 
an untenable state.

Cindy Veach
 
Cindy Veach is the author of three poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press) a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award; Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal; and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book “Must Read.” Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI and Poet Lore among others.