Helen Kelley | loose threads

    Sinking
    to a
    New Low

When those pneumatic chairs first came on the market, I was crazy to have one. You know the kind I mean: with the touch of a lever, the chair floats up or down to whatever height pleases you. This new convenience promised me wonderfully comfortable happy days ahead while I stitched away on each new project, whether I was hunched over my quilt frame hand quilting or sitting at my sewing machine.

I went out and priced the chairs. Being a new and modern convenience, these chairs were, of course, beyond my pocketbook. So off I went to a secondhand furniture store where I found just what I was looking for at a price I could afford. A man at the store helped load the chair into my car, and I drove home. I was in seventh heaven.

My new black and chrome chair looked stunning in my workroom. I sat in it, turned around once, and fell over. When I picked myself up off the floor and investigated, I found the chair had a wonky wheel. I should have known there was a reason it had been in a used furniture store. I took the chair back to the shop, where the salesman looked it over.

Helen Kelley is a quiltmaker, lecturer, author, and teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit Helen on the Internet at her website www.helenkelley- patchworks.com or email Helen at this address: helen@helenkelley- patchworks.com.

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At home, I sat in my new chair daily, stitching away cheerfully at my sewing machine. The chair was perfectly adjusted for my body, and each time I used it, I knew that I could sit and whip out intricate piecing in perfect comfort.

But a surprise awaited me. Just like a brightly colored party balloon loses its zip over time, my used chair started to lose something. As the years passed, it drifted lower and lower at an imperceptible rate, until one morning I realized I was seated considerably lower than when I first sat down. I was, in fact, so low that my eyes were almost level with my sewing machine's needle. Mighty low.

The downward drift came on so slowly that I hadn't known it was happening. I analyzed the situation. Although I ended up sitting in an unusual position, I realized this unconventional posture was a really great innovation. Now, as I sit at my machine feeding fabric under the needle, I am looking dead-on, sighting down the seam line like a sharpshooter aiming a gun. My seams are incredibly straight and accurate.

Never in this world would I tell someone else to hunker down at this peculiar height to operate a sewing machine, but I like sitting like this now. I have become accustomed to it. Strange things happen when you least expect them.

For years I've thought that tall women are gorgeous. Able to reach things at heights well over my head, they are always in demand at guild meetings to hold up quilts brought for show-and-tell. Having always wanted to be a woman with greater stature, my first impulse this morning was to ratchet my chair back up. On second thought, however, I believe I shall keep my secondhand chair where it is.

I have always known that doing patchwork was good for the soul. I've found it uplifting. I never expected, though, when sitting in my chair to make quilts, I would sink to such depths.

©HK 2007