Tag Archives: linen

Lining up

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lower right section of Global Warming 7-footer

I keep going back and forth on this project.  Should I complete it as intended (roughly 7′ x 4′), or break it into sections and move the thing along?

This little section (photo above) floated upstairs today and looks complete to me.

But I’m not quite willing to give up the big design yet.


Because I am not a planner, at this stage of production I often find ‘log jams’, or areas where the rectangular pieced sections are not lining up and where I am not willing to chop or add to accommodate completing a rectangle.


Once I pinned up some green grosgrain to divide sections, it suddenly seemed (seamed?) do-able.  Note to self: remember that this is a visual process and that you have a visual sensibility (“DOH”).

There have been quilts that undergo enormous changes at this phase… quilts where I find myself swapping out some of the larger chunks.  This has been partially in service of making the rectangles fit (think “Tetris”) and partially  because it can be fun to see how things look when the design is a little less conscious.

This particular piece, however, has been in formation for well over a year and I am eager to get to the final stretch.  And, I am feeling a strange loyalty to the design as I have constructed it.

The edges will pose problems.  My plan is to use some of the cool-toned patterns (the Anna Maria Horner large blue floral and a shimmery green near-solid) to fill in and frame the edges where I need another inch or two.  I will TRY to avoid the temptation to keep piecing/adding complexity.

What will be fun is to create a slide show of the quilt in its many phases and see how it has changed over four seasons.

For the finish — instead of using a whole cloth back and pinning the entire thing up and shoving it through my Bernina with a great deal of cussing, I think I’ll quilt it in sections.  I plan to use some overlays on the back, perhaps even with raw edges, to connect up.

Given that one of the problems with this piece is its scale — I really don’t love working this large — then it is obvious that if I want to continue producing pieces of this size, I have to figure out how to do it in a way that works with my style, studio space, equipment, and temperament.

Which reminds me that my word for 2010 is ‘congruence’.

I am so, so eager to find both the style of working and the subjects & images that really line up with who it is that stands with the needle in her hand, with the scissors at her side, and with her particular demons at her back.

Looking for Redemption and Crying Wolf

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The sagas go on and on, don’t they?  Started this crucifix series before “the flood” and why shouldn’t my particular saga have its biblical moments? Because what day doesn’t go by, really, when I’m not looking for redemption in some form or other? 

I am looking for redemption even on those days when it seems as though I am just trying to get through. I am looking for redemption even on my good days — and by that I certainly don’t mean times when I feel like the master of my fate — but rather I mean days when I have enough wherewithal to entertain the POSSIBILITY of accepting life exactly as it is. But here’s the thing, can one be —

”seeing things and accepting things exactly as they are”

and still find redemption? Isn’t wishing for a world in which every mess is an opportunity and every delay, packed with meaning, by DEFINITION, a state of non-acceptance (because, let’s face it, there ARE situations in which there is no silver lining to be found).


Well, anyway, there D. and I were yesterday, waiting and waiting for ‘the shoulder guy’.  It had begun to rain again, a status of weather that THIS week provokes a palpable dread. The patients were flying in and out all around us, but D.’s name had not been called at the 50 minute mark (I complained), or at the 65 minute mark (I complained again). Then after 75 minutes and after leaving, and after listening to D. ask, “Why am I here? This is useless” a few too many times, the assistant called us in. 

The assistant called us in just moments after I had written in two-inch letters on the intake form, “WAITED 75 MINUTES”, which of course made me wonder — had I written “WAITED 35 MINUTES” on the form 40 minutes earlier, would we have been ushered us in sooner? (You begin to see just HOW superstitious I am).

Anyway, I stitched on this piece for awhile, not for one moment asking myself to call in the Christ-energy of patience and not once noticing the disparity between image and mood. That’s how irate I was.

After 10 minutes with the doctor (who apologized so excessively I began to feel a little abashed), we scuttled off to X-ray.  And back.

And, OMG, the news was a little shattering (forgive the pun). What first seemed (to me) back in the dead of winter as one in a long series of whinge-fests, and then seemed (to the chiropractor) like a separated shoulder, turned out to have been a fractured collarbone. (Healed, already, I’m happy to report).

So, I apologized to D. (although not excessively). Then, after quietly pointing out that the amount and volume of complaints make it hard for me to pick out any particular one as needing extra intervention, D. and I devised a code for ‘this really, really hurts and I need you to do something about it’.  Our code is, “Mom, this is an 8.”

This was GOING to be a post about the basement and the progress down there and how the flood disaster HAS turned into this amazing re-shuffling, re-ordering, and investment in storage units that has me psyched and energized (in other words, an OPPORTUNITY). 

I was going to add something about the dynamics of dependence and understanding one’s personal style of attacking a monumental task (because dear reader, what most of you didn’t know is that my husband was in India for ALL of this, which provided additional OPPORTUNITIES for learning). Perhaps tomorrow I shall return to that, after another two inches of rainfall, unless, of course, I have my cherry-printed wellies on again and am threading the hose out the back door and trying not to cry.

Script quilt in progress

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I do like it when the machine gives me direction.
There have been too many times to count where the bobbin runs out just as I’m about to use the wrong color thread somewhere… or just as I am too tired to keep quilting with any control (but would have kept going had the thread not run out).

On this script quilt and its companion piece, I keep going to add machine quilting and something goes.  After breaking TWO needles and running out of bobbin thread once, I get the hint!

fragments coming together

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Closing in on a finish here.  This ‘sampler’ wants an edge and completion.

Collage, collage, collage renders places many layers thick.  Pins and machine will be useful.

Some layers have been peeled, ripped and shredded away to re-reveal what’s underneath.

A gessoed surface is not the most fun for poking a needle through, but the thing I will be careful not to do again, is to machine stitch right up to the edge of a piece with batting, because then it is tough to tuck the white under.

I have been mulling over what it means to be innocent (are we EVER innocent?  or, do we ever STOP being innocent)… and what it means to be setting out in love. Letters from my 20’s arrived in the mail yesterday (!!) from an old roommate, and in organizing my sewing patterns (also yesterday), I found letters I’d written and copied (because I worked in a copy shop in San Francisco) when I was 21.  All this stuff about relationships (‘ugh’ if I might say).  In some ways, it seems like a different person wrote those letters (thank god).  And in other ways, so much is constant.

The quilt, with its layers, fragments, re-attachments, ripped open words, stars, and ‘memories’, speaks to what it means to be any age and want to be seen and known, flaws and all.  The quilt speaks to desire and the ways it will be stopped by our less-than-holy selves, or expressed, in innocence and wonder.  If there were a spot of red in the panels, it could even be a valentine.

scratches

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Almost done with this one… some of the stitches need better anchoring, because it was hard to control the tension pulling through fabric that had been gessoed.

The little single chain crochet that is couched on the edge was tinted in a pot with onion skins and one lone black walnut shell which appeared in the kitchen the morning I had the pot going.

What I notice — There is a tension pairing marks made by me (the script, the stitches) and ‘found’ marks, as printed on commercial fabrics (those little vegetal shapes — which look like a primitive form of writing and those pink upstrokes on the linen, which I repeated with my black marker).   What I want to see now is a piece that ONLY has marks/writing made by me.