A Day in the Life. Trying for those first borders. The captions are in the photos.
Not done, but at least I can now go to dinner with my husband. Our Saturday-night date.
This is what happens when you realize that you’ve cut the piece 16″ and it should have been 16 1/2″. You piece it. With whatever scraps you have. Even though you are creating a new kind of fabric with a two-toned dot.
We interrupt Road for a minute to tell you the sewing machine is still cooking along. (More posts are coming.)
My sister came to stay for a few days. Guess what? She wanted to make a quilt. (Twist my arm.)
I had some blue squares leftover, and we cut some more from my stash and a couple of more squares from what I’d picked up at Road.
Yes, my circles are underneath another layer of improvised pinwall. So here’s where it was when we finished Monday night. I went off to teach on Tuesday morning, and she had a Quilter’s Epiphany. You know–when you hate everything you’ve done, and want to start over.
She’s sewed the block rows into strips and is sewing the strips together now. I’m going to make her stop so we can go and get dinner–husband’s out of town–who wants to cook when quilting’s going on? Sushi anyone?
These two pictures were taken by someone who attended a lecture by Becky Goldsmith, the creator and originator of the dotty circle quilt I’m working on. What I found interesting is her choice of fabrics. As we quilters in the universe work, we’re always comparing our efforts and choices by the photograph we have either from their website or in the pattern or book. And certainly that’s hardly accurate. I was quite interested in her range of fabrics here, how the the jumps between the corner pieces are more pronounced that they show in the photograph that I was working from. See this allowed me to open up my choices, and be a bit more adventurous.
I’m not as adventurous as the Australian quilters shown in on the Material Obsession website, but I could certainly stand with some loosening up, I think. These photos, and the ladies at Material Obsession are good examples for me.
I’m getting there, piece by piece.
Two quotes from Sister Corita, a famous art teacher. These are from the book Learning by Heart–Teachings to free the creative spirit, written by Corita Kent and Jan Steward:
When you are not separate from the creative process, time ceases to exist. You might start to feel tired and suddenly realize that much time has passed. It isn’t necessarily a happy time–and may be very difficult to start if it is a job or an obligation. But if you start with all the concrete needs and proceed in a thorough way–the creative process will take over and you will forget whether it is work or play. (page 111)
I have an idea for making something or I have a commission to do something or I have a deadline. . . and I always have a kind of natural resistance to getting down to it. Somehow I feel that this kind of natural resistance is quite healthy–because all the information, sources, and ideas need cooking before they can be served. So I go on living and I go on doing what might seem to be very uncreative things like shopping or cooking or washing the dishes or answering the phone or writing letters–and sometimes the data comes out and asserts itself into my consciousness, and I live with it awhile.
Artists, poets–whatever you want to call those people whose job is ‘making’–take in the commonplace and are forever recognizing it as worthwhile. (page 99)
I’ve been stewing over a title for a while. I think we quilters could use some help on naming our pieces, so I try to be thoughtful, and like Sister Corita, let things stew awhile before deciding. The quilt title comes from that aphorism “What goes around, comes around,” and we all know what that means. At the age I am, I see this now more than ever. If I send out kindness, and good will I tend to get this returned to me from my husband, children, family and friends. When I am critical, snarky, grumpy–you can bet this comes back too. And as I sewed these circles and listened to the national debate on whether what was said in angry tones during the fall election had come back around to hurt Gabby Giffords in the Tucson shootings, that piece of information stewed awhile inside as well.
Our quilts are representative of where we are, both in our personal lives and our culture and our nation. This quilt might be called something else in another place or another time. I also wanted to play up the idea of circles, so I hyphenated the second word to suggest children’s play, perhaps of coming round to play with a friend, or twirling around on a sunny happy day.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 