today horizontal stitching, going from side to side – which of course makes me look fatter. love how all the stitching is giving this vintage tablecloth-turned-quilt (dare i say it) body. with all the ideas and images that bubble up as i sew, i’m going to have to live to be another 202 years to finish everything.
throughout my life, i have shared the table with many people who have nourished me. my maternal grandmother is one.
she loved to cut grass, quilt, cook, preserve foods, make pickles, grow flowers, and enter cake contests. as a young woman, she attended college on a piano scholarship for one year before her father decided there was no need for women to be educated. while her father may have taken her out of music school, but he could never, ever take the love of music out of my grandmother who went on to teach each of her 14 grandchildren to play the piano. one cousin – the one who lived his childhood years in the far away land called new jersey – played the trombone.
which could be the equivalent of the piano in new jersey, i don’t really know.
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family, quilt, sewing
worked on more infrastructure stitching on autoquiltography l today. funny how this quilt (and others to follow) came as what i call a flash image because it (they) appeared to me out of the blue and quicker than a wink. for the imagination quilt i’m working on, however, the materials came first. i’m just “transcribing” the autoquiltography l, trying my best to stay out of the way of the image.
today i noticed the flower at my throat:
the flowers that are my hands:
and the anklet socks at my feet:
all unplanned. all totally happenstance.
muscle memory is such a good thing. finally reacquainted with my sewing machine – the one i haven’t used in decades, the one with a bobbin in need of a refill.
but i could not remember how to wind the bobbin. until finally i told my brain to shush and turned the job over to my hands. loving my brand new plexiglass extension sewing table. makes quilting a body the size of mine so much easier.
back at work on autoquiltography 1, focusing on the head today.
my head looks like e.t.’s. (these things happen when self-tracing on the floor with non-dominant hand.) noting the similarity in shape, those who know me would say “it figures” while biological siblings say “we’re still waiting.” (they are sure there will be an eventual revelation from mom about my obvious adoption.)
went for a walk today with mr. thrillenity and phoebe.
mr. thrillenity saw a lichen-coated limb cradled and perfectly balanced by a short, thin tree-on-its-way-up:
phoebe saw water begging her to wade on in:
i saw rocks that looked like hearts, until i got close enough to see otherwise:
we all saw:
found a place perfect for sitting, reading, and stitching on warmer days:
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nature, quilt, rocks, sewing, waterfall, welsh corgi
deciding to work with what i have in order to satisfy hands that are restless and itching to get moving (everything still in nc), began work on found crewel piece. no thinking, i said, just selecting, cutting, joining. the why’s, if there are any, will bubble to the surface in their own good time. here’s what’s bubbling:
layer l fabric:
layer 2 = venturing out
slug (my son) called me from l.a. after i cut last block for layer 2. so much fun to share it with him live and in the moment. as i told him about plans to go to nc tomorrow and get started on autoquiltography series again, how this was just working with what i could get my hands on here, i realized this IS part of the autoquiltography series. in that magical, conjuring way of creativity and cloth, in that way of deep, deep knowing without knowing that you know, this is a map of my creative evolution.
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cloth, creativity, crewel, knowing, quilt, sewing
I’d lived in Ready for years.
I’ve been in Set for months.
Today I am in Go. Gogh. Gough.
Years ago, I had this image flash into my mind, and ever since then I’ve longed to quilt it. “Well, then why haven’t you?” you might very well ask, and the answer is “‘Cause.” Other people needed me – or thought they did – or I thought they did. Didn’t have the material I needed. Had the material but not the tools I needed. For the longest time, I said I was “letting the tension develop.” The creative tension.
It’s a technique that often works well for writers. We want to write about something, but not even sure where to start, we just do a brain dump then set it aside for a while, not letting ourselves even think about it. Days, weeks, months – sometimes even years – go by, and finally we pull out that file and it’s like magic coming out of our fingertips. Oh how the words come together to form sentences that make so much sense we’re hard-pressed to believe it’s really us writing.
But after 2 years even I had to question the validity of my “creative tension” theory. I mean, let’s be honest: it had become out-and-out procrastination. Procrastination born of fear. Fear of not doing it right. When oh when will I ever say to myself what I say to so many others: “The only wrong way is to never even start, to not do it at all.”
To amp up the pressure on myself (on the outside, I called it “increasing my level of commmitment” ’cause it sounds so much better), for the past 6 months I’ve told everybody who would listen that 2008 would be the year of my blog and my quilt series. (Yes, in the years since the original image came to live with me, it’s grown into a bona fide series.)
By the middle of January, I found that I’d already agreed to four different volunteer jobs – none of which involved my blog or my quilt, just taking time away from them. So I put on my big girl britches and did something i HATE doing: I called every one of the people I’d agreed to help and explained my situation. (Fortunately, all the projects were months away, so nobody was left stranded.)
And so today – this very morning – it begins.
The first in my Autoquiltography Series.
The fabric for this one is a 54″ x 73″ tablecloth of the 1950s era that I found when doing a little post-Christmas shopping in Asheville with hubbie and son. The batting is unbleached muslin, and the backing is flannel.
I am the pattern for each quilt in the series, I as in my body. My daughter traced me late last year, but hers is a work of art in and of itself – so much so that I can’t bear to cut it. Big into don’t-think-just-do mode and with Phoebe watching (too enthralled to eat her treat), I laid myself down on the paper so that one edge of the paper ran up the middle of my body and began to trace.
Tracing with my left hand.
That’s when I realized I should’ve given a teensy bit more thought to planning this whole thing out. I am right-handed, you see, but I was already on the floor and rather than heave myself up to start again, I went with the ole’ good-to-use-your-non-dominant-hand-occasionally-when-doing-creative-projects. When the pattern was finished, I laid it on the tablecloth I’d folded in half and began to cut.
Some observations and key points:
Today I cut it out, tomorrow I start stitching and well, we’ll just see what happens.
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quilt, sewing
