- Free fabric is much easier to cut!
- Funny combinations work when they have to
- I'm not doing it alone - all the other people who have passed this fabric along are sharing in the eventual gift
The Quilts of Abundance
Late in 2010, my friend Veronicah was the recipient of 17 - count 'em 17 - banana boxes of mixed fabrics from a deceased estate. After much sorting and appropriate donation, she made up a box each for some quilting buddies. Sharing the love!
I'm a lucky possessor of one of these Boxes of Abundance. It holds a fairly random mixture of approximately shirt-weight cottonish fabrics from (I think) the middle 1980's. Not exactly what I would normally choose to work with.
My - self-imposed - challenge is using it to make quilts for my big patchwork group's community quilt donation programme. This has been far more enjoyable than expected.
Pharmaceutical Comforter
It all started at St Joseph's Primary School. Back then "fundraising" was known as "collecting for the Missions". What we collected was tinfoil. I doubt any of my class knew what the Missions were doing, or how our tinfoil would help, but we religiously collected each bottletop (remember them!).
Fastforward at least 30 years to me looking at my foil medication packets. No way can I treat them like rubbish. They represent the best strategy yet in managing my disordered mind... and they're tinfoil! And look, they're layered, with air in the middle. In a grid format. Kinda like a quilt really. So, the inevitable quilt project begins
This one has to be functional, of course. Blister packs are a bit stiff and scratchy to make a quilt that is nice to sleep under. After a few samples I decide on a simple half-square triangle block embellished with a packet.
It's very boring in the middle phase of making and embellishing all the blocks. Now that is done I'm enjoying playing with different layouts. Here's my favourite so far
Fastforward at least 30 years to me looking at my foil medication packets. No way can I treat them like rubbish. They represent the best strategy yet in managing my disordered mind... and they're tinfoil! And look, they're layered, with air in the middle. In a grid format. Kinda like a quilt really. So, the inevitable quilt project begins
It's very boring in the middle phase of making and embellishing all the blocks. Now that is done I'm enjoying playing with different layouts. Here's my favourite so far
More about the making of Pharmaceutical Comforter
Could be the Last Baby Quilt
Max arrived recently. His big sister has one of my quilts, so he gets one too. I make them fairly quickly out of whatever is at hand, and take particular pleasure in giving them a complementary pieced backing made from my stash of flannel samples. Max's is a triumph of the scrap ethic, made completely from the left-overs from another quilter's project.
I've said it before: this is my last baby quilt.
Why? there are bound to be more babies, some with a family precedent of a quilt from Auntie Sarah, and all needing quilts. I have more than enough fabric, and get a lot of pleasure out of being able to bring a special gift.
I have to stop, because snuggling in behind that fuzzy feel-good factor they are thieves.
The baby quilts steal my most precious, scarce resources: time, willpower, focus. I do good work on them, but not my best work. I offer that work up to the least critical audience imaginable. I romanticise the beauty of the motherhood I don't participate in. I choose to make a pretty baby quilt rather than struggle with the challenge of creating the weird wonderful unique images that rarely get past the sketchbook.
I make the baby quilts as cuddle rugs to comfort my own fear of inadequacy, of failure, of success. Knowing this, how can I make another?
I've said it before: this is my last baby quilt.
Why? there are bound to be more babies, some with a family precedent of a quilt from Auntie Sarah, and all needing quilts. I have more than enough fabric, and get a lot of pleasure out of being able to bring a special gift.
I have to stop, because snuggling in behind that fuzzy feel-good factor they are thieves.
The baby quilts steal my most precious, scarce resources: time, willpower, focus. I do good work on them, but not my best work. I offer that work up to the least critical audience imaginable. I romanticise the beauty of the motherhood I don't participate in. I choose to make a pretty baby quilt rather than struggle with the challenge of creating the weird wonderful unique images that rarely get past the sketchbook.
I make the baby quilts as cuddle rugs to comfort my own fear of inadequacy, of failure, of success. Knowing this, how can I make another?
Full and empty
Wow, I got full on vacation. Eyes and ears, mind and heart wide open to everything around me. And there was so much! Museums, galleries, concerts, classes, conversations, scenery, activity, shoe-shopping... Enough already!
I even came back about 8kg heavier, and no, this was not my shoes.
So despite my ambitious plans to stitch every minute, exercise every day, blog every week, I've actually "done" very little. Because I have been TOO FULL. Too full to chase an idea & catch it, too full to flex myself around it and figure out what it is, too full to tip-toe up to it and invite it to dance.
Instead, I've been emptying.
My do-list: caught up on baby-quilts & birthdy quilt blocks for my group and a bunch of other small, no-brainer activities
My stash: gave away almost everything I took to the US (more room for shoes!), using up fabrics more generously in shared projects, working from the stash rather than the shop
My ideas: reviewed the outstanding projects/ideas list and realised that I've outgrown many of them. I don't need to make them now, just because they were a great idea at the time. Just because it's in my sketchbook (thanks Kathryn) does not mean I am committed to making them.
My heart: took a good hard look at some grief I carry around, and made some more steps toward valuing that pain that is no one's fault and nothing will change
Current state? Light, empty, free... and ready to commit to the first large and serious project since Floating Cubes. This new work has a working title of "Pharmaceutical Comforter" and you will be hearing quite a bit more about it
I even came back about 8kg heavier, and no, this was not my shoes.
So despite my ambitious plans to stitch every minute, exercise every day, blog every week, I've actually "done" very little. Because I have been TOO FULL. Too full to chase an idea & catch it, too full to flex myself around it and figure out what it is, too full to tip-toe up to it and invite it to dance.
Instead, I've been emptying.
My do-list: caught up on baby-quilts & birthdy quilt blocks for my group and a bunch of other small, no-brainer activities
My stash: gave away almost everything I took to the US (more room for shoes!), using up fabrics more generously in shared projects, working from the stash rather than the shop
My ideas: reviewed the outstanding projects/ideas list and realised that I've outgrown many of them. I don't need to make them now, just because they were a great idea at the time. Just because it's in my sketchbook (thanks Kathryn) does not mean I am committed to making them.
My heart: took a good hard look at some grief I carry around, and made some more steps toward valuing that pain that is no one's fault and nothing will change
Current state? Light, empty, free... and ready to commit to the first large and serious project since Floating Cubes. This new work has a working title of "Pharmaceutical Comforter" and you will be hearing quite a bit more about it
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