Patch and writing by Hannah.  This is my personal patch that answers the questions I posed to other women.  My mother's patch lies directly below this one, and just under that lies her mother's (my grandmother's) patch.

 

My patch.

My patch.

What does that mean? 

They’re all my patches in some way or another…

 

My name is Hannah Mermelstein.  I am 22 years old.  I feel humbled and overjoyed to be the facilitator of this project that has certainly taken a life of its own.  I thank all who have helped to make this happen, who have made the following song lyric truer for me than I ever thought possible: “…when you feel your soul go beyond your skin and you know that’s the way that it’s always been…” (from Dar Williams’ “What do you love more than love?” on the album The Green World).

 

This patch represents both my current message to the world and a series of defining moments that have shaped both me and the quilt. 

 

At the bottom you see me wearing my typical purple and my “sewing skirt,” my favorite skirt that is sadly reaching the end of its life span (friends would argue that end came a long time ago…).  I wore the skirt throughout the process of sewing my patches, sketching my patches, thinking about my quilt.  More and more I found I was sewing myself (and specifically my skirt) to the patches as I worked… it was then that I realized the skirt was trying to find its way in, that I had no choice but to cut it up and make it a part of this quilt.  So here you have it, the seven layers of fabric in their original order.

 

And now we come to the quilt, the transformation, the embodiment of my worldview:

 

Patch #1 – the sewing kit

            This is the sewing kit my father made for my mother when they were in 8^th grade (shortly after they began dating).  In true late-1960s fashion, he stuck bright florescent flower stickers on the painted box and gave it to her as a pocketbook.  The fad lasted about a year, and sometime later my mother turned it into a sewing kit.  Throughout my childhood I had a vague awareness of it sitting on the shelf high above my parents’ bed, or out on the bed while my mother was sewing, but I never paid much attention until now.  Through much (nonviolent) coercion, I managed to acquire the sewing kit – but for this semester only. 

 

Patch #2 – “Chile”

            About a month or two before the idea for a quilt began to take root in my mind, I opened my Susan Griffin poetry book in a moment of distress and found myself staring at a poem that spoke precisely to what I was feeling at the time.  I struggle so often with priorities, with privilege, with perception… this poem examines them so beautifully. 

            While considering the thought of a quilt, after being inspired by the arpilleristas of Chile, I thought back to this poem once more.  So relevant in its context and content, raising questions that in some ways can never be answered and in other ways I find the quilt answering more and more each day…