Potholders Squares Quilt

What a dream, Jon’s “Care Agreement.”  Today, after going with Jon to his Pulminolgist appointment  I fulfilled my part of the agreement by spending some uninterrupted hours in my studio.

First I cleaned up a bit.  I had to.

There was too much fabric on my work table, so there was barely a table.  But more than that, I had to air out my studio, give it the same fresh start I gave myself by taking a walk in the woods before going to work.

I can’t go from practical to creative without a transition.  My brain doesn’t work that way.

After the clean-up, I eased into work by making a few more squares for the quilt I started weeks ago.

Wendy, who has a couple of my quilts said she was interested in it, but she wants it big. “Only if it feels right for you,” she emailed me.  That’s what makes me want to try.  Wendy gets the creative process.

So I’ll try and see what happens.  I can already imagine it, but that doesn’t mean what I’m seeing now is what it will be.

My instinct was to come up with a system for how the pieces would go together.  But when I tried my ideas I didn’t like the way they looked.  How many different ways can all these small pieces be put together?  I have no idea, but I do know I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what looks best.

So I thought of the Dada movement, started during WWI when Duchamp and the other artists tossed scraps of paper in the air and made art from where they landed.  The war made them give up on any thoughts that there might be any reason in the world, so they left their art, like life,  to chance.

Instead of thinking about how they could relate to each other,  I just started lining up the squares I made into one big square. From the picture I took of them, it looks like there are two missing.

So I’ll make two more and then look it over, making sure there’s nothing about the way the squares are that bothers me. I do imagine I’ll make a few adjustments.

Then I’ll start sewing them together, adding a few pieces of fabric here and there to make them fit together.

After that, who knows…