Last winter my friend Brighde and I taught a class for Pagan women who were on the verge of becoming crones. (In our particular tradition, woman are considered crones only after their 57th birthdays).
The women thought they were going to have an intense four-week series of discussion-group meetings. Brighde and I had a different idea.
We decided that while it's very tempting for women to gather in groups and discuss issues ad infinitum, sometimes that can be a substitute for dealing with those issues in real time. So while we gave the women huge amounts of homework filled with questions about aging and changes with which one must deal in the final third of one's life; and provided them with special workbooks in which to write their answers; we never once looked at what they wrote, nor facilitated discussions of any of the questions they had. We knew these would take care of themselves, once the women started thinking about them. Besides, as we told them all, a crone's journey is essentially solitary.
What we did do was teach the women how to make a quilt. Each week that we met, we taught a new block, and gave the women time to sew them in class, using fabric from Brighde's and my abundant fabric stashes. (Notice to quilters: teaching a class and letting everyone use your fabric is a great stash-reduction technique).
We chose each block carefully to fit the theme of the homework and of the deity we invoked at the ritual that began each meeting. So we taught them how to make strip-pieced nine-patch blocks at the session that focused on the crossroads crones must face. The goddess we invoked for that session was Hecate (sometimes spelled Hekate), who is both the queen of the witches and the goddess of the crossroads. The following week we invoked the Cailleach, and focused on the swirling turmoil that hits women at menopause. That week we made blocks with fused spiral appliques, and taught the women all about the wonders of WonderUnder.
The following week, the theme was, as I put it in the homework questions,``love, sex, death: the whole damn thing.'' We invoked Freya, who is queen of the Valkyries (the harvesters of the battle-slain dead, according to the sagas), and the Norse goddess closely associated with love and sex. In a nod to Freya's Valkyries, we taught everyone to make multiple flying geese blocks.
The next time we met, we invoked Sophia, as wisdom, and the wisdom that does seem to accrue with conscious aging. We made pieced friendship star blocks to signify wisdom radiating outwards from the wise crone.
We had two additional sessions after that for women to assemble their blocks into a quilt top, and for them to layer and tie the quilts. (Tied quilts, we figured, were a good place to start). For those two sessions we invoked Pallas Athena (as a matron goddess for artists and art-making), and the Cycladic goddess as an image of the crone stripped bare of all illusions.
The women brought friendship blocks they had made on their own to the last session, and Brighde and I each gave them all a special friendship block. too. Mine was a pieced house block, and I set them all in a wintery landscape of black white and gray, with a red chimney and the door and the figure within the house as the only color. Brighde made appliqued teacups as a symbol of hospitality.
Of course Brighde and I were so busy helping everyone else that we didn't get our quilts done right away. I finally assembled mine and threw it together--doing an utterly crappy job of sewing on the binding--so it would be finished to take down to the April Empty Spools seminar at Asilomar in April where we both took a fabulous class from famous quiltress Pamela Allen. I do have some considerable quilting and sewing skills, but sewing on binding is definitely not one of them.
To my quilt I added a few applique blocks of symbols that seemed important for a Crone's quilt: a butterfly, the Saami sun symbol with which I sign my ceramic work, a pentacle, a triskele, and a triple moon. Friendship blocks from other women included pinwheels, a yoni-shaped applique and a goddess.
The goddess applique I was given was tipped in one direction, so I decided I had to put it on point. Then I surrounded it with many small flying geese in red and black. It became the centerpiece of the quilt. I also ran sets of a pinwheel block I learned from Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston's ``Collaborative Quilting'' down both sides of the top.
I used a very very thick and fluffy batting and tied the quilt using pearl cotton. It's not the sort of quilt I ordinarily make -- although I do love scrappy-looking quilts -- but it's fun and bright and I've enjoyed sleeping under it every night since I finished it. This photo is of the quilt top itself on my design wall (which is made from two quilt batting-covered 4'X8' heavy plastic foam panels that are used for sound insulation). The backing is a lovely fabric I've had for years with images of leaping salmon.
The one rule we told the women was that this was a quilt that could never be given away. Purpose of that direction was to counter some of the ``mother-martyr'' stuff that has become second nature to too many women by the time they reach crone age.
Here are details of some of the blocks in my version of the crone quilt. You can see that the goddess image was appliqued over a barkcloth block in a Hawaiian-themed print. Each of these photos will pop up to a large size when you click on it.
This is certainly not the greatest nor the most artistic quilt I've ever made. But I love it anyway. It reminds me of the happy days we spent working on quilts together, and of the themes of a crone's life, and the fact that in my religion, making a quilt can be seen as a sacred act. All told, the quilt feels like it's got some big magic sewed into it, and what could be better than that?
Brighde and I are planning to give a workshop at Pantheacon in San Jose, California, in February 2010 that will focus on preparing women for cronedome. We won't be making quilts, but we will tell the stories about how ours came to be. Maybe you'll join us there.
This is beautiful and a very moving croning tradition. What an incredible idea to have women turn all of that thinking and learning about themselves into this incredible work of art.
Posted by: k. emvee | July 16, 2009 at 08:41 AM
wow- your quilts are so colorful and very beautiful. thanks for your generous sharing of your art.
Posted by: Hollyheartfree | July 22, 2009 at 12:36 PM
Wow wow wow wow! This is amazing! You are so very lnetated and should be so proud of this masterpiece! I mean wow is all I can say! I love it and can only imagine how many hours you worked on it. Just beautiful!!!!
Posted by: Pedro | March 23, 2012 at 05:40 PM