A friend gave me an old spool of black thread that she had found in her attic, and I decided to use it to quilt with. As soon as I started, it became immediately apparent that the thread had decayed. It broke easily and often, which was frustrating, to say the least. A number of people told me it was not worthwhile to use rotten thread, and advised me to throw it away, but I couldn’t bear to waste it. And I was interested in the question of what constituted a “worthwhile” expenditure of my time and effort. Of course the thread will not last. But neither will the quilt. Permanence is not my objective.

It occurred to me that decay and resilience were the themes of the quilt. When the thread broke, I simply tied knots and kept going. The thread breaks, but the line continues. I decided to make a series.

When I started on the third quilt, I could see that the thread would run out soon. And just as I was coming to the end of it, my father died. I embroidered a diagram from one of his patents on the quilt, and I sewed on the empty wooden spool at the bottom. I called the quilt “Atropos,” after the Greek Fate who cuts the thread of life.