I was making my quilt called Dragon when I got the email from Wendy. She and her husband had lost everything they owned in one of the recent fires in California. Now they were living in a mobile home, traveling around, looking for a new place to live.
Wendy asked if the next time a I had a quilt for sale if I could let her know. The quilt she bought from me was lost with everything else.
I told her about Dragon, but it was too big. So Wendy sent me the dimensions of the bed in her mobile home.
This morning I pulled up a picture of Wendy’s quilt “Swirling Circles of Color“. She said loved the colors in the quilt.
As when I was making a new quilt for Ellen, whose quilt shrunk when it was washed (it had wool batting, as opposed the cotton batting I usually use) I wasn’t trying to replicate the quilt. Not that it would even be possible to do, but I was trying to get the feeling of the quilt and it’s colors.
For Wendy’s quilt I began by pulling together scraps of blues, oranges, reds and greens. The black and white birds came from a placemat, not the “right” colors, but perfect in their flight. I started sewing them all together.
When I got stuck, I looked thought the few Mola’s I still had in my stash. I had used one of these hand-made textiles in Wendy’s “Circles” Quilt.
When I saw the pattern on the red, orange and maroon Mola, I got a chill.
When I first started quilting, I made two quilts called Migration Quilt I and II. The design was a squared off spiral, like the four spirals in the Mola. Migration is, in essence, what Wendy and her husband are now living.
I reworked the patchwork squares I had made, to border the Mola.
As I looked down at the beginnings of the quilt, laying on my studio floor, I thought of putting a line of solid color around the square, but instead I immediately saw the quilt reaching out in the four directions. It did not want to be contained.
I’ve never had such a clear vision so early in making a quilt.
I added the next round of fabric, but then got stuck again. Unsure of what I do next, I decided I had done enough for the day. As if I used up all my creative energy in visualizing the direction the quilt would take.
When I go to bed tonight, I’m going to ask for a dream, to help me understand what to do next. I don’t expect to see the quilt anymore clearly than I already have. But I do expect to have a clear enough head in the morning, to not let me get in the way of doing what comes next.
Love it!