The last (I think) in a series including part I, part II, part III, and part IV.
I had a few contractor bags of textiles in storage. Normally, I would never store textiles in what was essentially a garage, nor recommend anyone to do so, and if I was staying at someone’s house and knew the bedding I’d be using had been in storage, I’d really consider sleeping uncovered on the floor, or in my car.
Of course I am thinking of bedbugs, lice, scabies, mold, crabs, moths, cooties, fungal infections, anal worms, stranger’s aerosolized sneezes and vomits, rats, mice and their hantavirus, cockroaches, and anything that can crawl, slither, hop, or stroll from someone else’s locker full of filth and dead bodies into mine. But I thought it would just be for a few months – but then it wasn’t…
But we checked on it three or four times a year, and I monitored it for stench and discolorations and chew marks and desiccated insect corpses (there were a few stinkbugs, but I’m used to those mysteriously making their way into our houses old and new anyway). But everything was fine – even the upholstered furniture. Everything that could be was washed was, and the furniture sprayed with diluted white vinegar and set out in the warm sun for the better part of a day.
One of the items bagged up for the last few years was a randomly pieced flannel duvet cover I made around six years ago.
The fabric is entirely N’s and my shirts and pajama bottoms – most dating from the Grunge era. Among my eclectic-dressing high school chums, we called a plaid flannel shirt “flaid plannel,” as in:
“What are you wearing to the show tonight?”
“Oh, a flaid plannel and my oxblood docs.”
(And do I need to remind you that was before docs were made in China?)
The orange and green shirt was a favorite of mine in high school (and paired well with reddish boots.)
And the yellow and black a favorite from college (paired with a secondhand and smelly, but awesome, pair of black docs). Some of the patches have oil paint and darkroom chemical stains. The grey and black was one of N’s shirts and one of the softest flannels I’ve felt, but also several sizes too large for him as was characteristic of the ’90s.
I don’t use actual quilts very often – in the summer I prefer a coverlet (or I need to make a lightweight quilt) and in the autumn, winter, and spring I have to have a down duvet. On the coldest nights, I’ll throw a wool blanket over the duvet, but down is the only thing that gets warm fast and stays evenly toasty but not too hot, and makes me a happy snoozer.
So this is not really a quilt, but a duvet cover with a pieced top, and since it’s washed more often than a quilt, some of the seams have popped open and are in need of repair. It’s also a bit too small – I hate that full/queen size in standard manufacturing since queen is bigger than full, they are not interchangeable – so I’d like to add another few inches to the width for better drape even if the feathers don’t fill it out.
Eventually.
ASTITCHMATISM 