Summary: Cisco started quilting in college and, somewhere along the way, it became a way to show how much he cares. But now he's trying something new - making a weighted quilt - and its got to be absolutely perfect.
Hartmonfest2019
- Feb 19th - Cisco character fic
- Mar 15th – artsy
A History in Quilt Squares
Cisco quilted his first pillow sham in college.
He had a couple of shirts that didn't fit right anymore and a set of flannel sheets that had shrunk enough that they no longer fit his long twin bed. He'd liked the sheets design pattern and, after buying a new set of sheets, he couldn't quite bring himself to just get rid of the flannels. So he took one of the pillowcases, chopped it up into squares and rectangles, and took those and the old shirts to a nearby craft store that had free to use sewing machines. A little trial and error later and Cisco realized that his half-remembered lessons from Home Ec in Junior High were just not cutting it. So he signed up for a class the store ran on Saturdays – 10 dollar cover charge, fabric and thread provided – and re-learned how to make a pillow, a grocery bag, and a zippered pencil bag. They also taught him how to test fabric and thread for the ideal tension and stitch and how to adjust for two different fabric types being sewn together.
The next time Cisco sat down at the sewing machine, he ran smack into his next problem. He didn't actually have a pattern in mind. So he fixed together a couple of pieces of fabric in a starter pattern for practice, then put everything away in his grocery bag (made out of Star Wars themed fabric) and found a book on quilting for beginners. He flipped through it for a few minutes and then added some of the basic tools it called for to his shopping basket. Once he was back to his dorm room, Cisco fished some grid paper out of his desk.
Laying out all his materials and using what he'd made that day as a starting point, Cisco began sketching out what he wanted the sham to look like. When he started to pack it all up when the sketch was done, it occurred to him that he wasn't going to remember which piece went where based on the sketch alone. So he pinned numbers to the fabric matching numbers he put on the sketch. Then he popped open the quilt book and started reading about different patterns and a bunch of smaller-than-blanket projects.
They all looked like fun. Cisco bought some quilt batting and made another pencil bag. For his cousin's birthday, he made a coin purse and for Mother's day he made placemats. Another cousin got a makeup case and his Aunt got fancy pot holders. And Cisco wound up with two meme-shirt and flannel pillow shams.
Not bad for his first year of venturing into quilting. Better yet, Cisco had inadvertently stumbled across a relaxing hobby that helped his mind rest in a way that playing video games and reading fiction never quite managed. He got a cheap sewing machine as a birthday present for himself and started making bigger things.
First a small lap blanket that Cisco eventually gave to his roommate as a graduation gift since he tended to 'borrow' the blanket all the time anyway. But then he got ambitious and planned out a queen sized quilt. More t-shirts and the last of the flannel to match the shams, but that wasn't enough to make the quilt. So he bought a set of queen sheets in order to use the flat sheet as the underside of the quilt and cut up the fitted sheet for more quilting squares. Only... the quilt started to look boring when he laid out all the fabric, so Cisco also got a bunch of random quilting scraps from the craft store and ended up with a design that was, perhaps, too eclectic.
He ended up redesigning the quilt about three or four times before he ended up with a mixture of fabric and meme-shirts that looked nice and would complement the shams he'd already made. His roommate was thoroughly sick of walking into their room and having to skirt around the edges of the loose fabric laid out all over the floor at that point. (Another reason Cisco gifted him the lap blanket.) So they were both glad for him to move on to the actual sewing part or the quilting.
Of course, towards the end Cisco ran into a problem with the lacing. He didn't want to have to rent time with the quilting rig at the store – only the regular machines were free - especially because the waiting lists on those tended to be ridiculous. So he ended up doing long narrow lines down the length of the quilt and quartered it width wise. It looked alright all things considered (there were some really shaky looking lines towards the middle due to awkwardly bunched up fabric interfering with his sewing), but he wanted his next quilt to be a little more artistic lacing wise.
When Cisco moved into his own apartment, one of the first things he did was set up a quilting desk in the living room. The sewing machine itself went on an adjustable height rolling cart so that he could move it around the apartment and sew wherever he liked – in front of the tv, beside the quilting desk, in his bedroom... just, wherever he felt like being that day.
He did a lot more little projects, filling his kitchen drawers with homemade potholders and his linen closet with placemats and table runners. In fact, he went a bit overboard and ended up giving away a few of his creations to friends. He made a new lap blanket and used it as a guinea pig for the craft store's quilting rig, creating an intricate lacing pattern. Maybe too intricate, but he'd had fun playing around with the machine.
When Caitlin and Ronnie announced their engagement, Cisco fished out one of his quilt designs and asked them if they'd like him to make one for them. They already had one of his table runners and some placemats, so their response had been an incredibly enthusiastic yes. He'd taken them craft store shopping with him and then thrift store shopping for shirts with memes they liked. He delivered the finished quilt to them in September before the accelerator exploded.
When he visited Caitlin after Ronnie died (the first time) he found her curled up on the couch, cocooned in the quilt he'd made.
After the accelerator exploded, Cisco started working on a quilt for Doctor Wells. No design ever really felt right. He couldn't really find any shirts with memes that fit him. Cisco restarted the project a couple of dozen times before giving up and boxing it up in favor of working on a quilt for Barry. That one just flowed so easily.
When the truth about Dr. Wells came out, Cisco had to wonder if, on some level, he'd been unable to make the quilt for Dr. Wells because he'd sensed that something was wrong with him. He took out the box and put all the unused scraps back into the quilt pile. He debated unstitching what little he had done, but eventually Cisco gave in the urge to be a little destructive for a change. He found a metal container he could safely burn things in, tossed the unfinished project in there, added some lighter fluid, and sat out on his balcony watching the fabric burn.
It was weirdly cathartic.
This left Cisco without a quilting project, however.
So he started looking through his scrap pile and came across a t-shirt with a torn seam.
Keep Calm and Han Shot First.
Staring at the shirt, Cisco smiled faintly remembering his first day of work and what an ass Hartley had been. How he'd never have thought they'd ever be friends, yet somehow that was exactly what they were moving towards being these days.
He'd idly considered the idea of making Hartley a quilt a few months earlier and he considered it again now. Hartley had stayed over at Cisco's place a lot the last several months, couch surfing between Cisco's place, Caitlin's apartment, and Joe's house. While at Cisco's apartment, Hartley had developed a habit of stealing the quilt off Cisco's bed for his blanket nest on the couch. The first time Hartley did it Cisco had been so strongly reminded of his college roommate that he'd started laughing.
He had another giggle fit after learning Hartley also liked using the quilt Cisco made for Caitlin and Ronnie. Cisco probably found it a lot funnier than it really was, but there'd been kind of a dearth of things that were truly funny lately so he was just happy to find amusement where he could.
So there was really no question that if Cisco made Hartley a quilt, Hartley would love it.
And, really, that was what cinched it. The idea of Hartley in his new apartment reading a book and drinking tea while cuddled up in a quilt that Cisco had made was just too appealing to pass up.
Cisco laid the shirt out on the quilting desk and continued to look through the pile, eventually laying out enough for about a third of a queen sized quilt. The Keep Calm shirt, of course, and then there was one with a silhouette of a dementor on it and another with a stylized time-turner. He'd also found a blue Star Trek TOS shirt with a large science patch on the front. The main colors of the scraps were black, blue, and red, which ought to all look nice together.
Laying out the four shirts side by side, Cisco tried to figure out what the theme should be. If it were science fiction then the Harry Potter shirts wouldn't work. Except... Hartley was a big Harry Potter nerd. Bigger than even Cisco, and he never missed a local convention if he could help it. But if the theme was Harry Potter, then the Keep Calm and Star Trek shirts would have to go and, well, Keep Calm was his inspiration piece. Cisco did not want to ditch the inspiration piece.
One by one, Cisco inspected the shirts, trying to think of what it was that drew him to those four specifically.
The Star Trek shirt was a left over from making Barry's quilt. It hadn't quite gone with the color scheme in the end – red and gold, naturally – and so Cisco had set it aside. He'd found the shirt at his favorite thrift shop, the fraying seams having relegated it to the rag bin. The color blue matched Hartley's eyes... sometimes. Hartley's eyes were hazel and thus were blue or green depending on what Hartley wore and the lighting around him. But it wasn't really the color that had caught Cisco's eye. It was the science symbol. Spock's symbol.
Spock was Hartley's favorite character from TOS and the science symbol easily represented Hartley's first love: physics. While Hartley could be represented by the engineering symbol too, Hartley only had a bachelors in mechanical engineering. He had a doctorate in physics.
Once upon a time, Hartley had taken great pleasure in reminding everyone to call him Dr. Rathaway. It seemed, though, that everything he'd gone through in the last two years had killed off that pride. Cisco couldn't remember the last time Hartley had insisted upon his well earned title.
Smoothing out the shirt, Cisco felt something kind of sad clench in his chest. He wanted Hartley to have that sense of pride back. Sure, Hartley had needed to be humbled, but not this much.
Keep Calm and Han Shot First was the next shirt Cisco contemplated. It represented their first meeting, but also how far they'd come... and maybe how far they still had to go. They were never going to be able to forget their past or how awful they'd been to each other at times. But they had learned to forgive and move on from it and discovered they had a ridiculous amount of interests in common in process.
More importantly, Cisco thought Hartley would get a kick out of seeing the shirt as part of the quilt.
The dementor shirt was fairly straight forward, as was the time-turner. Those Cisco considered as a set. The dementor represented the time wraith and that moment when Hartley sacrificed his revenge to save their lives, putting himself between Cisco and Caitlin and the danger outside the pipeline cell. The time-turner represented the temporal paradox that caused the time wraith to show up in the first place, a paradox that none of them were sure when it would come full circle.
Cisco knew what the theme was now. Hartley's history with STAR Labs laid out in pictures from his favorite fandoms.
This was going to be hard to shop for, that was for sure.
It took a few days after starting the project before Cisco could start hunting for more shirts.
Cisco's first find was a stylized lightning bolt, white on a black shirt, that could represent Hartley being a part of Team Flash. He wasn't quite sure about it, but it'd make a good filler regardless and was another rag bin find. The seams were in bad condition but the fabric itself was good shape. No stains or weird smells so Cisco was confident that there was nothing wrong with it that a pass through the laundry wouldn't fix.
Next he alighted upon a shirt with ASL on it. Above it read 'What Part of' and below it was 'Don't You Understand?' Cisco thought he recognized a couple of the hand gestures and assumed the hands spelled out 'sign language' but... he ought to know this, shouldn't he? His friend had hearing problems and there were times when Hartley wouldn't be able to hear at all. Hartley shouldn't be stuck communicating through pen and paper when there was a perfectly good language both the hearing and deaf alike could understand.
Cisco made a note to look up local classes on ASL in his phone and set it to remind him that evening. The ASL shirt then went into his shopping basket. Even if it didn't go on the quilt, Cisco wanted to give it a good home. Maybe as a couch pillow? Hartley could probably use a few of those and it would help give the new place a personal touch. Besides, the quilt would take a long while to complete and it'd be nice to give Hartley an apartment-warming gift now while the place was still new. The quilt could wait for Hartley's birthday or Christmas.
Further browsing through the t-shirts left Cisco at a loss, however. It was hard to know exactly what he was looking for with this particular theme. He really couldn't expect to stumble across something perfect for the quilt just like that. There needed to be specific things he was looking for that represented Hartley. Like...
Like a rainbow dragon shirt. The gayest angry dragon Cisco had ever seen. Hadn't... hadn't he called Hartley an angry dragon once? Cisco was pretty sure that had been a thing. The rainbow dragon went straight into the basket.
Okay, so apparently Cisco could stumble over the perfect shirt just like that. But surely that sort of luck struck only once.
And it did only strike that once. The closest Cisco came to another good find was an E=MC^2 shirt. It was green and thus didn't go with the color scheme, but he got it anyway to use as a second couch pillow.
All in all, Cisco's first thrift store venture had been a good start and it gave him something else to work on – the pillows – while waiting to finish collecting everything he needed for the quilt.
On his way home, Cisco stopped by his favorite craft store and picked up a bunch of blue, red, and black quilting squares and plenty of black thread. But he also picked up an assortment of other colors, since he intended to get the pillow designs finalized that evening at the very least.
"Cisco, you didn't have to get me anything..." Hartley trailed off as the box opened, revealing the two t-shirt quilt pillows inside. "You made these?" he asked after lifting them both out delicately. Or, perhaps, reverently was a better word.
Cisco blushed a little at the way Hartley was staring at the pillows. But he also had to wonder when the last time Hartley had been given gifts just because. This was the reaction of someone who'd forgotten what it was like to get a thoughtful gift and was a touch overwhelmed.
"Yup. They're easy to take off and wash or transfer to another pillow if the one they're currently wrapped around needs replacing," Cisco flipped the E=MC^2 pillow over to show Hartley where the overlapping panels in the back could be carefully bent to expose the pillow within.
"These are really great." Hartley ran his fingers across the ASL pillow. "Thoughtful too. I... I can't imagine it was easy finding this one."
"Actually, I did find that one by accident," Cisco admitted, rueful. "But it did make me realize that I should probably start learning ASL." Hartley stiffened up and Cisco wondered if maybe he'd overstepped after all. "I found a couple of free classes at CCU and the community college. The community college course has better hours and is closer, so I was going to start those this weekend, actually."
Hopefully Caitlin and Barry would be tagging along too. Neither of them had texted back, though. He missed spending time with them, but... Caitlin seemed to think Cisco was upset with her for leaving STAR Labs even though he wasn't. Barry was just avoiding everyone.
"That's... you don't have to..." Hartley sounded a little choked up.
"I don't have to, no, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't. You're part of the team, even if Barry doesn't want to admit there is a team right now, and there'll probably be times when your hearing aids stop working or you've taken them out for repairs or you just don't want to wear them. You already know ASL; you should be able to converse with us using that when you need to instead of having to wait for us to write things down all the time. I'd find that pace to be infuriatingly slow and I know you would too. It'll probably take a long while before I can really communicate anything worthwhile in ASL, but..."
"I could help," Hartley offered, relaxing somewhat and smiling tentatively. "The classes are a great idea, but I could work with you between classes. Maybe teach you new words, give you someone to practice the signs you learn in class with? Show you the equivalent of 'your hovercraft is full of eels'." He was grinning now, signing along with the last bit.
Cisco laughed, relieved that Hartley was pleased by Cisco's decision after all. "I'd like that. Show me the hovercraft sign again."
It took Cisco a few weeks and several thrift stores to finally put together enough t-shirts to design a quilt around. Which meant he could get to the fun part, laying out the fabric and creating a pattern.
For t-shirt quilts, Cisco favored irregular patterns, so his first step was to iron the shirts and cut out each design into a square, or rectangle. Then he put a new queen sized top-sheet on the ground and started laying out fabric from the top right corner and branching out from there.
Halfway through, however, Cisco wrinkled his nose in distaste and picked everything back up off the sheet. He'd been trying to lay the shirts out 'chronologically' based on what they represented to Cisco about Hartley. It was a good idea, but looked wrong in practice.
Cisco huffed and grumbled and laid out the t-shirt pieces out on his quilting table. He put them all in chronological order first, in alternating rows of three and two so that the top and bottom rows had three shirt designs.
There were bright reds next to cyan blues and most of the black shirts clustered together at the bottom and it just... didn't quite work right.
He swapped the pieces around a few times until he settled on the black shirts as a horizontal stripe from left to right with the reds on top and the blues on bottom creating a sort of ombre effect in both directions.
That looked right.
The fabric was then placed atop the queen sized sheet once more. Just the t-shirt fabric at first, but soon the rest of quilting scraps designated for the project was laid out too. He swapped around a few more pieces and then...
Time to sketch out the blueprint and label every single scrap of fabric.
Instead of grabbing his grid paper, Cisco collapsed onto his couch with a yawn. Surely he could take a break first... it was really late, after all. Or early, depending on what his opinion of 2:00 am was at the time.
Cisco fell asleep before he could get too introspective about it.
Around the time the team fully reformed, Cisco began to notice that Hartley seemed tired a lot. He'd thought Hartley's insomnia had been largely due to the stress of constantly dealing with Dr. Wells. But it seemed not.
When Cisco asked him about it, though, Hartley blew it off as though having headaches all the time was normal and claiming he did just fine with minimal sleep.
Cisco took that as a challenge and started looking up methods for combating insomnia, anxiety, and stress. He quickly came across weighted blankets and lost a few nights to researching. First their usefulness, then how to make one.
Then Cisco spent a night staring balefully at the unfinished quilt.
Was he really going to do this? He'd never made a weighted blanket before. What if he messed it up or made it too heavy or not heavy enough or...
Cisco finished the top of the quilt and boxed it up with the queen sheet and batting intended for the final steps. And then he researched different weighted beads for home made quilts. He considered making the quilt a 'slip cover' for a weighted interior to make cleaning easier and the pros and cons of square lacing versus diamond lacing for weight distribution.
Eventually he decided to make a test blanket. A lap blanket. He got an eBook from the kindle store on weighted blankets as an instructional guide, determined the pattern he wanted for the blanket, and headed back to the store for supplies... and realized he hadn't decided on colors.
As Cisco stood indecisively in front of the vast selection of quilt squares, he found himself gravitating towards the yellows and blues. And, well, if he was going to yellow and blue, then he might as well get some pink.
He'd gotten a pan flag back in College, but it'd been ruined at Pride senior year and Cisco had never gotten around to replacing it like he'd intended. In fact... Cisco couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten any pride merch. Or attended Pride. Or even just let himself celebrate being pan.
That settled it. Cisco was making a pansexual flag themed weighted lap blanket.
Cisco pretty much flew through the basic brick pattern he'd decided on, which lent itself well to the pan flag color scheme. Then Cisco carefully followed the directions in the weighted quilt book for creating the pockets to pour the beads into, sewing them up, and repeating the process with the beads again. When he was done he had a four pound lap blanket. Not as heavy as the full size quilt would be, but not bad for a first attempt.
He quickly ferreted out a few problems, however. The top of the quilt lumped up a little oddly in places since Cisco hadn't made it a slip cover around the weighted part and only used batting on one side of the beads. Good enough for a lap blanket, but not so much for a gift worthy quilt.
Pulling out his leftover batting scraps, Cisco made some test pieces – which he reluctantly admitted to himself he should have done first – and made what were basically little weighted placemats. He changed around the size and shape of the weighted pockets a few times, tried out doubled batting with the beads in the middle, eventually figuring out just how he was going to make Hartley's quilt the best quilt he'd made to date.
Hartley pulled the blanket out of the box, his expression hard to read but turning surprised as he realized how heavy the quilt was.
"Oh, wow, Cisco..." Hartley unfolded the top of the quilt and let out an unexpected laugh, dropping the left side to cover his mouth as he giggled. "Keep Calm and Han Shot First, huh?"
"Seemed appropriate." Cisco grinned widely, warm pleasure curling through him at the sight of Hartley so happy with the gift.
Hartley drew more of the blanket out. "You said the lap blanket was practice... for this?" a slight blush was painting Hartley's cheeks.
"Yeah. Like I said, weighted blankets are supposed to help with anxiety, stress, and insomnia, amongst other things. The lap blanket's helped a lot with my feeling antsy after work, especially after we have a really bad day with the superhero-ing. I've been hoping maybe this will help you sleep better, maybe make your headaches less frequent." Cisco fidgeted a little, nervous without really knowing why. "I didn't want to make it too heavy, so its about nine pounds. I was aiming for eight, but I think I underestimated how heavy the batting ended up being. It has twice the batting as normal, so it'll be really warm, but I wanted you to be able to reverse the blanket depending on whether you want quilt side up or not..." Cisco trailed off as Hartley dropped the blanket to draw him into a hug.
"Thank you, Cisco, this is wonderful." Hartley held him tightly. "You'll have to tell me what made you pick all those shirts, though." He pulled away with a grin, smoothing a hand over the Han Shot First meme. "Except this one. I think I know why you picked this one. We've come a long way from there, haven't we?"
"Yeah, we have," Cisco replied, wanting to lean back into Hartley's touch. They'd come a long way... and who knew where they were headed next.
Notes: The final scene is set either on, or shortly after, Hartley's birthday. I'll figure that out for certain once I get back to the main story. It's also set shortly post break up for Cisco and Kendra (a very amicable, mutual break up), which is why she doesn't get any mention here.
Of course, scattered in there alongside becoming a great quilter, Cisco also learned how to make epic cosplay outfits.
This is actually part of an ongoing WIP series. While this story stands alone, if you're interested in the rest of the series go check out The Legends that Never Were over on my Ao3 account (same user name I have here). Once those stories are complete, they will eventually wind up cross-posted here. But that could be a while.