Quilting, writing and being a survivor

  I am a strong and powerful woman, 

using the stepping stones I have put down to take me into my future. (note to self, Annabelle 1992)

As I'd been advised for the writing process, I decided just to let the stages for making this tablecloth flow - no measurements to act as a guide, just going by general feel. It all started with the inspiration provided by a rectangular piece of fabric in ochre tones showing distinctive symbols that could be construed as being Indigenous in design. This was to be the centrepiece and starting point. To give it emphasis, it would be framed by strips of an already cut fabric in small read and beige squares. It has been one of my favourites for borders.  But when I attached the pre-cut strips, there were shortfalls on one or two sides, so small squares were cut for the corners in black and white squares. The third fabric would provide a sort of backgrounding for the centre, having a clay brown randomised cross hatching. It had to be joined, but the randomisation of the fabric pattern made that less detectable. All too easy, except...

I had stabilised the whole cloth by ironing on a simple cotton backing and then started to attach the backing with a spray on glue. Before putting the binding on around the edges, I quilted through the three layers around the frame, then attached the binding to finish it off. When I hand hand stitched the binding in place I threw it onto the table top triumphantly, expecting a fete accompli. 

But when on the table, I noticed that there were 'buckles' on the edges of the quilt. It did not sit flat and the lines that I thought were straight lines looked skewed. So, then came the unpicking in an endeavour to straighten out the buckles and wavy lines.  It also meant re-attaching the backing fabric. Of course, to do this the finished binding had to be removed! Frustrated, rather than unpicking, I took my scissors to it! So much for trying to 'wing it'!  All of this meant more time, and more actual top quilting than I'd thought to do and rebinding. After finishing off with a new binding, the tablecloth is sitting flat on the table, as a tablecloth is expected to do!

I have to ask myself why such a simple thing as putting a flat tablecloth together from three main fabrics has caused so many complications along the way. It came to me that it was a metaphor for the story I am wanting to tell of my life's journey. That I've been trying to put into words the recent years my experiences, feelings, observations and learnings while confronting the diagnosis and living with the treatments for advanced melanoma. It is a limited lens, especially since I have reached a turning point on the journey with melanoma, by having come to what is arbitrarily known as being in, living in 'survivorship' mode as the five year mark since starting treatment passes. 

What has this creative venture revealed to me about writing, and this next stage of my life as a survivor of metastatic melanoma? I'm not really sure, other than I had been trying to use existing journal writing of the time of treatment as you would base fabrics, and squeeze excerpts into a prefabricated framework of themes. It has been a useful process for sorting and gathering. But in coming to realise that those writings are the raw materials - the uncut fabrics - that can't be forced into a particular part of the overall narrative until they are carefully chosen, and in the process unpicked and re-discovered as part of the process of creating the story of who you are becoming. As a 'survivor' it is about finding out who you are continuing to become through adapting to and learning from the richness of your lived experiences. This is what I'll be writing.