Scarlet Stone

In July 1776, the United States signed the Declaration of Independence, which began the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the thirteen colonies. In 1976, two hundred years later, Steve Jobs formed the Apple Computer Company, the film Rocky was released, and Jimmy Carter was elected president. It was also in 1976 when my mother answered her patriotic calling and decided to make The Polyester Quilt. She must have made a pact that it would, of its own polyester-born resilience, last another two hundred years comforting and humoring the family. It is doing a fine job keeping the pact. It was a patchwork quilt with four-inch squares of red, white and blue solids or prints with brief appearances of tan (to ease the eyes). Her goal was practical and three-fold: she celebrated American independence, and the independence found by female school teachers when authorities decided they didn’t have to show their legs on a daily basis, freeze on car rides to work or on playground duty and they, like their male counterparts, could wear pants to work. She also wanted to use her polyester sewing scraps in a functional way.
All of the teachers at Gertrude Boase Elementary in Hoyt Lakes where mother taught first grade went wild over polyester. Memories of mom, dressed in her pantsuits, getting ready for work in the mornings in the era when Engelbert Humperdinck ruled supreme with his records spinning from the hi-fi stereo console flash through my head. The teachers were either buying or sewing pantsuits in brilliant rainbow shades that were even visible through the heavy cloud of smoke that filled the small teachers’ lounge. I saw the brilliance as I walked to the office...seeking a ride home on a day when pretending to be sick and the comfort of eating a Mrs. Swanson’s pot pie and watching the Price Is Right overwhelmed me. I recall grass green, robin’s egg blue, red, polka dots, stripes and floral polyester moving in the lounge haze. You name it, those teachers wore it....even their husbands were into polyester with their shiny collared shirts, slacks and the quintessential leisure suits that were so popular then. Often these suits were sewn in bold solid colors too, with plastic or metal buttons down the fronts and used for pocket flap decoration. Never let it be said that the classic detailing of these leisure garments went unnoticed. The quarter-inch topstitching occurred wherever it could make an appearance...running on every pocket flap edge, down the fronts, across the sleeve cuffs, pant bottoms, anywhere...to the point of...ad nauseum.
The polyester quilt has no quarter-inch topstitching and I am very grateful. When I look at the quilt, I see patches of fabrics from a few dresses I sewed for myself in high school. One of the dress patterns I had used was the iconic Diane von Furstenberg’s wrap dress (DVF wrap) that was a huge sensation and flattering as-all-get-out to any figure! My dress was navy with tiny blue polka dots and boasted white trim. I wore it on the bus to school and to speech meet competitions throughout northern Minnesota...never giving thought to a wrinkle. It served me well as I confidently competed, winning first place in many, many speech meets. Hail to the DVS wrap dress!
There is another blue multi-color striped fabric that is sewn into the quilt. I found it when mother and I were planning to sew caftans and drove north from Hoyt Lakes to Ping’s department store on Tower’s main street looking for fabric. Today the Timberjay is in the same building. I distinctly remember walking toward the back of the store, past moccasins, rugs and clothing and seeing the striped fabric among scads of polyester bolts hoping to be chosen. It was on a table that was located right where my current desk is at work today. What an amazing overlap of time and space. At Ping’s that day, mom chose a shiny blue and gold poppy-shaped floral on a red background that still speaks loudly to the era of its creation. It too is in the quilt.
I remember mother had taken several machine embroidery classes, and she knew how to use the decorative stitch CAMS that snapped into the back of her new Viking machine. She entered into a rigorous power-sewing frenzy adding borders to blouses, jackets and other tasteful applications...meaning she didn’t trim dad’s briefs or anything like that. In the middle of the quilt, on a solid white square, she machine embroidered the dates 1776 and 1976. Like a historical marker outside a building in Boston, it is noted for all of time. For the quilt backing she used a blue polyester-blend bed sheet that she would have purchased new.... a worn bed sheet with a history of its own had no place in mother’s quilt.
In the decades since its creation, the polyester quilt has never faded, it is unable to rip or fray, and it is incapable of wrinkling...even under massive force. For me personally, polyester was difficult to deal with at times and I haven’t worked with it for decades. Like a big Ford LTD from the 70s, it did not corner well. You got “ester” resistance when sewing corners that ended up resembling rounded pencil erasers. You could not press it into a crisp edge no matter how hard you tried, so you got lazy, soft edges. This always disturbed me and to this day I suffer from post-polyester-sewing trauma (PPST). So the miracle of using polyester was that even if a scrap had been shoved into a storage box or waded in a clump you could basically lay it flat and cut your patchwork squares without ever having to iron it. This ease was the amazing thing about polyester’s grand entrance into our lives. Regardless of the variation or the decade, polyester fabrics always have been strong, resistant to stretching and shrinking, easy to clean, quick drying, and resistant to wrinkles, mildew and abrasions … a perfect combination for clothing.
What is polyester fabric? It is basically plastic....an unnatural fabric to be sure. To make polyester into fibers, the plastic is melt-spun or heated and forced through spinnerets (a plate with small holes) into fibers. The fibers are stretched to five times their length, combined into yarn, and then machine-woven or knitted into polyester fabrics. I now offer...a brief history of polyester:
 1950s: Invented by DuPont and called Dacron (we called it a kissin’ cousin to polyester).
 1970s: The Leisure Suit bolted onto the fashion scene, hot, smelly and shiny.
 1990s: Performance polyester was developed with new fiber shape and capabilities.
 1996: Dri-fit made its debut in the US Olympic uniforms.
 Today: Go ahead, make fun of your dad’s leisure suit from days gone by but...Polyester is again “all the go” with redesign and moisture management reducing microbial growth. It’s softer, cotton-like feel and light refraction qualities knock out the glare to give it a matte appearance. The fabrics are so light that a bolt of fabric often weighs less than the cardboard roll it’s delivered on. Polyester and other plastic-based fabrics are used throughout the high-end fashion, sporting and outdoors worlds and referred to as “techno fabrics”.
There is nothing sporty or techno about our beloved polyester quilt however. It spent most of its time at our family cabin over the years and has now come to roost with me in Soudan to live out its perpetual golden years. The quilt was wonderful in May and October on those chilly nights when you wanted that extra layer that weighted you down a bit. It absolutely would not breathe...holding every ounce of heat in your body until you got kind of sticky and odorous and had to fling it off before succumbing to dehydration before the day had begun. When one of us was sick or pouting, we just wrapped up in the polyester quilt or when the hide-a-bed couch flopped open to receive a tired body, they were first covered in polyester. We joked about the polyester quilt, we adored the polyester quilt, and I still adore it today. I don’t pull it out of the cupboard very often because it doesn’t match my furnishings at all and would get on my nerves. It could easily make an appearance on the Fourth of July but profuse sweating is already often the case in high summer, so why aggravate that situation. It wouldn’t work as a tablecloth either, with its yarn ties in the center of each square causing cups or cans to tip over, so it only makes seasonal appearances each winter. I will always enjoy seeing the different squares and remembering what clothing item they came over the course of the past decades.
So, now you have heard the legend of the polyester quilt. Most likely it will outlast me and my siblings, and that is okay. Like many family quilts, I know it will bring comfort and humorous stories to whomever it gets passed along to in our family.
History Source: blog.ministryofsupply.com, “The Evolution of Polyester”