MAY 2023 SPOTLIGHT: NAOMI SECHREST
Each month we spotlight one of our members. This time around, we feature a story from Naomi Sechrest.
Naomi received a Bachelor’s degree in Media and Business with a minor in Fine Arts from Harding University in 2009. She enjoys drawing and sketching in her travel journal and teaching 3rd grade Bible class. We hope you enjoy her story.
QUILTED COMFORT
y granny was an excellent seamstress. Sometimes she would make me clothes and I would wear them to school glowing from within. She would measure me and grumble about how much I was growing, or pinch me if I couldn’t stand still. I thought she should open a store and sell the clothes she had made. Further imaginings made me realize how impractical this would be, but it was still a fun thought. Granny tried to teach me how to sew, but I never got much farther than the felt duck pincushion I stitched together.
When I was eight, she finished making a quilt for me. I’m pretty sure she started on it when I was much younger. It had six panels with nursery rhymes in the center bordered by rings of white, pink, and then blue. There was a large pink heart in each corner. Old Mother Goose, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, and Georgie Porgie kept me company in all of their stitched fabric glory. A part of me loved the quilt and I felt special that she’d made it for me, but a part of me was embarrassed because I was much too old for nursery rhymes. Still, on my bed it went and the nights and weeks passed.
In fourth grade, we were assigned to write a story about one of our toys coming to life. I wanted to write an epic drama full of action and mystery. That’s exactly what Hudson did. He read pages and pages to the class about how he shrank to a few inches tall and had a crazy adventure with his living toys. Hudson was so irritating. I couldn’t think of anything. I remembered the quilt, and desperately tried to think of anything else. Nothing came to mind, so I wrote a dialogue with my quilt.
I told my quilt that I was embarrassed by it because I was too old for nursery rhymes. I don’t remember what the quilt said back, but I do remember that it listened to my feelings and we talked it over. By the end of the paper I felt at peace about it.
Ms. Poer loved my paper. I was surprised because I’d only written one page and it wasn’t full of epic adventures or mystery. It was just a quiet conversation before falling asleep. I had come to terms with my embarrassment over the nursery rhymes.
The quilt stayed on my bed for several years. It had become a comfort to me. When I was sixteen, I took it to a week-long summer program at Freed-Hardeman University, my parents’ alma mater. My father had died of a heart attack the month before. I was reeling from the shock of his death and the insecurity of a week away from home. I felt safer wrapped in its familiar patterns.
The quilt went to college with me, nursery rhymes and all. No one ever made fun of me for it. I had accepted it, and they did too. If anything, my roommates complemented the quilt and noted how special it must be.
It was a few years after college and I was still sleeping under that quilt. It had never been long-arm quilted and the fabric was starting to shred. I got a few referrals and found two different ladies who were seamstresses and experienced quilters. Both said it wasn’t savable. I tried using stitch-witchery, a kind of iron-on glue, to keep the shredding fabric in place, but it didn’t hold. I couldn’t bear to get rid of it, so it was repurposed as a covering for a large window next to my bed.
My granny died earlier this year. The quilt has always been a comfort but now it’s also an heirloom. It continues to watch over me.
You can find out more about Naomi on her member profile page.
Visit the WCCW Group Member Spotlight page.