From our earliest times, we are aware of our senses: sight, touch, hearing, smelling and tasting. We probably know or know of a person who has lost one or more of these senses. I know I am not the only person to wonder how it would be to lose a sense. Most all of us experience some loss or diminishment as we age. How does sense affect our quilting?
Well, the most obvious to discuss is sight. We use sight for the color palette, of course. We also want to see to do the piecework, applique, quilting and most every other function. Surprisingly, it’s not mandatory. I have a friend who has one fake eye and super low vision in the other. Her husband picks her fabric, cuts it and explains the pattern to her if she can’t make it out. She sits at the sewing machine and sews. She has guides and magnifiers and strong lights. Ironing is possible but he helps with that too. When she needs to un-sew, she does it by feel. It’s amazing really. She loves to sew and she has a husband who helps!
Touch is pretty easy to understand. Fabric has texture. Thread has texture. We use touch to nestle seams, to feel if the pin is all the way through, to feel the ridges on our rulers. The vibrations of a sewing machine are soothing (or irritating if you are on a wobbly table). Without touch, we would probably burn ourselves on a hot iron regularly. Touch guides our scissors and rotary cutters. Touch guides a seam ripper if you can’t see the seam. And the list goes on.
Hearing is probably not necessary, but certainly helpful. I can hear when my machine runs out of thread, if something is unbalanced in the mechanism. I can certainly hear the snap of the needle breaking. The swish of a rotary cutter tells me I’ve cut all the way thru. Of course, there are the sounds of speakers, teachers and fellow quilters. Then there are the sounds that I sew to; the birds, the music on the radio, the cats playing, baseball, football, whatever.
Smelling is a little harder to explain, but here it is. Can you smell the crud on the bottom of your iron burning? Don’t you just love that smell? Once, I had a Pfaff motor catch fire; I certainly smelled that. I can tell if a fabric is a batik by smell. I had a new cutting board once that was truly impressive; so bad it had to live in the garage. I can smell dinner on the stove or the cookies in the oven when I am trying to sew and cook at the same time.
Taste, that’s the best of all. Quilting, to me, is about companionship. Classes, quilt stores, guild meetings and all other places you go to quilt or talk about quilting have food. Think about it. Then go grab a snack and enjoy the meeting with me.
See you at the meeting.