a site-specific quilt

Berkeley quilt (no 1), aug 25 - 29 2025

I spent the last two weeks in Berkeley with my partner, and time slowed down. I was on vacation but they were not, so I had lots of time to myself, and I felt all the hours of every day. My fatigue filled many of them - I learned the term “sudden crashing fatigue” as a symptom of perimenopause, not from the doctor I consulted, but from my own desperate googling after crying to my partner because I had to suddenly cut our plans short, again. Yep, that is the name for what this is. An unexpected 3 hour nap from 9 am - noon after waking up at 6, an after lunch crash that will not be powered through, getting the check and leaving the restaurant right now even though we got the early reservation.

And - in the hours between lie downs, as time moved slowly - an unexpected quilt came together swiftly, and with ease. My first quilt made from almost entirely thrifted fabrics, cotton shirts from ThriftyCat in Berkeley, next to our favorite coffee shop. Inspired by this incredible quilt exhibit at BAMPFA, and a soul-nourishing day with my artist friend emet, as the universe crossed our paths in California (from Berlin and Cedar Grove, respectively).

I learned from emet the term “site-specific” art - a performance or exhibit that can only happen in one place, because the elements of that place are integral to the art itself, woven in. A dance born in a clearing in the redwoods - or a quilt made of thrifted shirts from a neighborhood shop, the only fabric on hand. Made in a span of a few slow warm summer days, in a quiet new spare bedroom sewing studio, between naps and to the sound of my sweetie on work calls. Sewed next to an open window and a fan because Northern California is cooler but has no AC, and the studio is upstairs. A quilt-top pieced together so fast but so unhurried, unforced, just ready to let itself be made.

Site specific sounds snooty but really - it’s the truth, isn’t it? About everything? If we’re actually present? We’re not hypothetical ideas of people who function in a vacuum (as much as we try to plan our lives that way) - our relationships and our desires and our lives are site-specific, it turns out. I have been wrong about every “type of person” I’ve thought I am - one who would never be in a relationship, never be in a long distance relationship, never want to share a home with a romantic partner. And yet here I am, in this site-specific relationship, sharing two homes in CA and NC, in a dreamy stage of life I couldn’t have imagined even a couple of years ago. Sewing a quilt in a home I never thought I’d share with the partner I never thought I’d have, on a coast I never thought I’d live on. Sewing this specific quilt, that couldn’t have been made any other time or place.

And so I present to you Berkeley quilt (no 1). I love it. It made itself. It’s so so soft. It feels right, and it feels like a week in August in Berkeley in the summer of 2025.

May you make the art that is waiting to be made from the pieces of your life right now. Or may you let yourself be led to an entirely new and unexpected place, that you couldn’t have possibly imagined from this one.

xoxoxo Mer