Tag Archives: quilts

repetition

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It is possible that I am making the same quilt over and over again.
Oh look, there’s another blue moon! And — surprise! — another hut, with its two-toned roof angled skyward.
And, my goodness — two in a week!! —  ANOTHER two-toned roof and ANOTHER moon — stitched together!
Leave it to a Buddhist to address the matter of repetition with eloquence.  Gary Snyder:

Repetition and ritual and their good results come in many forms.  Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, checking the dipstick — don’t let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits.  Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may do our ‘practice’ – which will put us on a ‘path’ – it IS our path… The truly experienced person, the refined person, DELIGHTS IN THE ORDINARY.  Such a person will find the tedious work around the house or office as full of challenge and play as any metaphor of mountaineering might suggest…. One goes out onto the ‘trail that cannot be followed’ which leads everywhere and nowhere, a limitless fabric of possibilities, elegant variations a millionfold on the same themes, yet each point unique.

From, The Practice of the Wild.

Here is a peak at what I really think about this latest Moon Hut quilt (depicted with my feet above).

I make the sky out of a linen so soft it begs to be touched.  The swirls on it suggest wind to me, and are a green I struggle to name – sea foam?  Moss?  The dragging of thread along some of the swirls pleases me, accentuating their drama and direction, providing a welcome counterpoint to yammering, televised heads debating Medicare’s future.  The orange leaves and red leaves play off of each other, and provide a feathery sense of movement, and a nod to the incomparable work of Jude Hill, who explores feathers and wings this season.  The moons of the foreground place sky into the ground – a kind of reversal that also pleases me.  There’s even a little redemption here – for I am making use of a fragment from a barn quilt that couldn’t find a place until it landed here.  How can all of this not be (to quote another icon) a ‘good thing’?!!

Today I will practice thinking about these hut and moon quilts as “elegant variations” – which I already know to be true, if I am honest, if I stay away from over-thinking, if I flick doubt away like a pesky gnat, denying it purchase.  That’s a practice, too – flicking doubt away like a pesky gnat, denying it purchase.

Where pleasure resides, repetition is no effort at all.

silly

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I have a few questions this morning, prompted in measure by the most recent class I’m taking over at Spirit Cloth.

What if silliness is a form of freedom?  And, if you decide being silly is important – can you make it happen? Or is it by definition spontaneous?

I can’t draw horses.  Should that stop me?

I am looking into slavery in all its grotesque specificity.  Reading about pestilence, torture, whippings, labor practices, the Middle Passage, transmission of culture, textile traditions, loss of culture, roles of mistresses, overseers.  Is it possible that such a weighty reading discipline ALONE ought to dictate a measure of specific whimsy… for balance?

What if I tipped the eaves, just a little, on some of my little houses, and they sprouted wings?!

And why don’t I dream about flying anymore?

Do you? Do you dream about flying?

 

Gathering wool

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An effort from last year above the mantle.  A horizon trying to emerge.  Or perhaps, sleeves?  The whole thing wanting to turn into a kimono.

Dreams are on my mind this week.  Well, they’re always on my mind.  But, I mean, particular dreams.  For instance.  Not long ago, I dream that my boss asks me what I want to learn this year, leans forward, eager, to hear me.  I say clearly and resolutely (and unaware of the dissonance):  “I want to learn more about garment construction!” [I work at  a law firm].

I’ve been reading books about psi phenomena — how it has been studied, how it has been rejected by science.  One of the books looks at data collected online in psi tests to see what precognition of 9/11 was evident, if any.  (“Entangled Minds”, Dean Radin)  It got me thinking, so I pulled out a journal from 2001.  This entry of mine was written on 8/28/2001:

K. dreams that water’s flowing on him and freezing him to the ground.  He moans in his sleep.  D. wakes up crying and crying and crying because of leg cramps.  I dream that I’m being held hostage by a terrorist.

A few things about this stand out.  One, it is hard to remember, now, how less frequent our references to terrorists used to be.  And, while my dreams have run toward the violent, normally it is personal violence & not political.  Two, K.’s icy elements notwithstanding, in twenty-three plus years of sharing a bed, I have heard him vocalize during a dream maybe a dozen times.  Three, D. was a restless sleeper, it is true (and at that age, OFTEN in bed with us, as he was that night) — nevertheless, the collective sleep activity in our bed that night can only be considered remarkable.

Waking dreams fill my pages as well.  I often use a Tarot card image, ‘randomly’ selected, as a jumping off point.  On 9/3/2001, I pulled THE TOWER and here is some of what I wrote (we are now eight days from the attacks):

I am the force of change.  Pure, simple, swift, upsetting change.  Change can be good like a blast of fresh, much-needed air, or it can feel disastrous, tragic.  I don’t indicate, in and of myself, what type of change [is] coming.  Jung’s observation – the unworked inner will come and get you from the outer.  Bodies fall – bodies representing forms of all kinds… Burning down the house.  Some houses need burned down – the ash & Phoenix thing, but even before you get there, the laying waste to false, limiting structures, in & of itself, a worthy activity.  This is what happens, oddly, when one embraces the dark side – the brittle masks, the tin houses, collapse, crumble, melt, fall in on themselves….

Clearly, I was looking for a psychological interpretation.

This next dream remnant is less clearly connected to the events of 9/11, but I add it because it seems a part of the mix.  Note – there was only one Egyptian among the hijackers (sometimes cast as the ringleader) and he spent his last night on earth in a non-descript hotel on Route 9, a short walk from my home.

9/9/2001 — Neighbor’s married a 16 year old boy.  He’s handsome and muscular and so young.  Nancy’s trimmed her ancient wisteria to let more light in.  I’ve printed out directions to a place in Egypt that I’m going (it’s out on the Fan Pier?).  At the courthouse, M.F.

 


You’ll note that the Fan Pier, occupied by the federal courthouse, is directly across the harbor from Logan Airport.  The Egyptian who was to sleep a quarter of a mile away from my house the next night, was surely thinking a great deal about this very vicinity.

“M.F.” is a high school friend of mine who lives near the San Diego airport (in late 2001, there were no direct flights from Boston to San Diego.  The flights that were hijacked out of Boston were bound for San Francisco and L.A.)   One could say that my unconscious could have picked a better dream figure, especially since my brother lives in L.A. — and yet — it is a Californian airport connection.  Isn’t it significant that my mind didn’t pick a local friend, or a friend who’s moved to Texas or Oregon, or a friend who lives near a grocery store or a river?

I’d be interested in hearing if other people who have writings that date back to August – September 2001 can see anything that in hindsight looks like premonition.

Entangled Minds, Dean Radin

Extraordinary Knowing, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer


Rearranging the pieces

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That incredible constellation fabric was the ’tissue paper’ for my Christmas gift from a friend in Maine (Lisa makes bowties).  I needn’t tell you that the silk patterned with stars was gift enough!

Nearly all of these sections were pieced into three long-ish strips and made it up onto the board.

The stars only show up in small rectangles, though, meaning that the nice night atmosphere created by having a horizon line, did not transition off of this work surface.

I have been thinking that all of these sections may need to divide into TWO QUILTS — one depicting night and one depicting day.

about six feet tall

Clip art polar bearing (top right) is going.  Entire top treatment, in fact, to be revised.

Here you can see where some of the fish batik and dusty-blue rayon-shirt-spirals ended up.  I may have to dunk that ‘tavern’ swatch into tea for a couple of hours — it pops a little too much.

Here’s what I rearranged on the floor with remnants:

Dots in the trunk…

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Christmas came a little early! I met a jeweler in October, who is married to an upholsterer, who called me last week and asked me if I wanted some fabric.

I tried to limit myself to two bags, but took three, and I may go back for some more silks. It was all so beautiful and neatly folded and sorted by color and/or fiber type.

Truly made my day — my week — my month?

But, here’s the thing. As I fall down the rabbit hole of blogging and find one amazing quilter after another, three of whom, say, then lead me to another set of amazing quilters (perhaps in the comments of the first batch of fiber artists), and then I find ten other amazing quilters on a sidebar somewhere in there, and I am feasting my eyes in wonder and appreciation…. I am falling, falling down this seemingly endless tunnel of creation thinking — can I possibly slow down long enough, commit long enough, pursue long enough, to create a signature?

And here’s another thing, I am starting to wonder how I can continue to be a quilter who merely SEWS when all the work that most excites me these days seems to involve dying, bleaching, wringing, aging, distressing, and intense surface embellishment.

So, while I LOVE, love, love these dots — part of me is judging them for being premade dots — dots that I have not fashioned with my hand, dots that are not imposed by rust or clamps or applique. They are velour-ish designer dots.

There is more to say about this that has to do with learning/imitating/finding one’s true palette/tempo/scale/approach, that I am much too tired to take on at this moment.

But let me say that in falling down this rabbit hole lined with pictures, I am aware that I have to preserve a rhythm, a confidence, a pursuit, that is all my own.

Which is difficult this time of year because even though I have some time my basement-space is too cold to work in right now. And for some reason, I am feeling determined to keep the upstairs looking festive and if cluttered, cluttered with Christmas things.

I guess I am taking a break.  I am wondering if I want a “word” to inform a series of quilts, like Jude Hill and others who follow Jude are thinking about…  And what would my word be?  I have been collecting fabrics for awhile now that have a script-like quality — perhaps what I want to explore is the shape and nature of writing itself, and not a particular word.  Take this wisteria, for example — I feel its twists and turns as a kind of language, one that very definitely resembles writing.

Lastly, I am mulling over the idea of taking on one master quilter a month and consciously making a single piece that does homage to their style, content, and approach (as I understand them), as a way to learn, as a way to more directly work with this whole tricky business of learning by imitation and making something one’s own.

But don’t worry — I love my velour-ish designer dots and have the utmost faith that they will be well used in the coming year!