Humility Blocks

I am making a quilt. I don’t pretend to know what I am doing, but I am determined to improve. I have done a few baby quilts, but this one is full sized. Kate made Eleanor curtains from some pretty Laura Ashley fairy material and since there was some left, I volunteered to see what I could do about incorporating the extra fabric into something for her bed. This required what we in the business refer to as “fussy cutting”, so I could get the maximum of fairies, and figuring out the math involved to get striped sashing. I had planned to do some hand quilting, but at the rate this is going, I think I will settle for major ditch stitching.

By co-incidence a fellow Grosse Pointe blogger posted links to some inspiring quilting sites recently. I am plenty inspired, it's the know-how I need. I intend to take a class, but meanwhile I try to teach myself from books. The subject of “humility blocks” was new to me. I found the topic in a book called “Let’s Make a Patchwork Quilt” by Jessie MacDonald and Marian Shafer:

For at least 5,000 years it has been the custom of art needleworkers to express their reverence for the gods by making one or more intentional mistakes in their handiwork. They believed that only their God could make a perfect thing. The custom has been noted in Oriental, Mid-Eastern and Native American (notably Navajo) artifacts.

The tradition was faithfully carried out by American quilters. If their quilts were perfectly made, they rectified the situation by painstakingly creating a mistake. Quilt blocks containing errors were called “humility blocks.”

I told Ernie about the concept and he was most intrigued. I suppose for a lover of philosophy there is an over-riding element of redemption. For me there is a justification as I create my humility blocks. Humility quilt? Eleanor is only two, and in her eyes, Grandma can do no wrong.