In spite of earlier declarations, I spent some time machine-stitching the Script Quilt today. Went gingerly, so as not to break any more needles. The gessoed section was bowing. I wanted it more flush with edges, even if raised, due to variety of layers. The edges are begging for attention. The edges are where we come undone. The edges are where we meet the world. I am tired today. Very very tired. Feels like a soul-tired, not a body-tired.
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!
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.