I sewed those strips onto my quilt today. More on the bottom and a few on top.
Then I spent a huge amount of time making a very simple decision for the rest of the quilt. Two different fabrics finished the quilt off.
You can’t see it in the picture, but the brown fabric is spotted with acorns. (I should have taken a close up of them, but now it’s raining and dark out. I’m sitting in the living room with with Fate and Bud sleeping by the wood stove and I just don’t want to go outside to my studio to take a picture).
Because of the hand stitched center square and the colors, from the beginning this quilt had an early American feeling to me. When I was looking for fabric to surround the center of scraps, I wanted something that brought it closer to the present.
I tried a lot of different colors solid and patterns, and many browns (most that Lorrie sent to me from her mom’s collection). But the acorns were on a different shelf and I didn’t see them at first. When I did, even before I placed them next to the quilt, I know they would work.
“Acorns,” I said out loud, “of course.”
It was just this morning when I was walking in the woods that I saw two small oak trees. They were really just a twig about 8 inches tall with two or three big soft red leaves. I didn’t notice them all summer when the leaves would have been green, and I don’t remember seeing small oaks growing in the woods before.
I guess I wasn’t paying attention.
But late this summer oak trees kept showing up in my visualizations and dreams. A symbol of healing and strength.
I bagged up all the scraps that I didn’t use in the quilt and swept my floor. I had to make room for laying out and sewing my quilt.
So my messy studio is relatively clean again. It was satisfying finishing my quilt before the weekend, it feels important to me somehow, although I’m not sure exactly why. I know a lot of emotion went into it, being I made it on the week of the election.
As if I was working out my feeling by making sense of the scraps. And I like how it ended, surrounded by simplicity.
Like the traditional feel to this quilt and how it was kept interesting with your scrapy fabric choices! I think I need a creative project to work off my post election thoughts and concerns . . . glad you had this to help you, Judy
It’s a wonderful way to get out of myself and to do something positive Judy. I feel fortunate that this is my work!
Another stunner!
Thank you Carolyn.
This made me feel a bit better after this week’s election…
Jean Pascucci
9:38 AM (8 minutes ago)
to me
Lawn Sign
by David Holper, Poet and Writer
All over this country people are stumbling out into the November half-light, stepping tentatively onto the wet grass under the graying sky. They stand for a moment, numb, and then they do just what I am doing: they tug up their lawn sign. You know the one. The blue one that laid claim to hope, to joy. The one that offered us all a better way.
After I pull it up, I stand there a moment longer, though there is no one to witness this simple act. Holding it, I feel despair nibbling at the edges of everything, whispering to me to give up, give in, reminding me there is no way to win against forces so much greater than any I can ever muster, reminding me it will be years before such a chance is offered again. If it is ever offered again.
But deeper than that corrosive voice there is one worth hearing. And this voice reminds me, standing there, that despair is not nor ever will be the path I choose. For on the path where I will find my feet again, I recognize grace as an act of bowing to something far greater than myself.
So I take the lawn sign, I put it away in the garage. I go back into the house and take up the work before me: offering love and grace in return to everyone who hungers for it this morning—and all the mornings to come, knowing that the long arc of justice is one that neither I nor anyone can fully see, but also knowing I need not see the great distance ahead to get busy, to make good trouble, to resist the evils about me with every fiber of my being.
I remember this simple lesson: All I need to do is take this first step. Be it in darkness or tears, it matters not. No one can turn me aside from the journey that I must take. So I will walk on for a time alone, until I see you there, just up ahead in the gloom, and I will hurry to take hold of your hand. And together, we will go on, taking heart, gathering others just like ourselves, until our number is vast enough to turn the tide back. And knowing this, I put aside all doubt, hurrying forward in the gathering darkness.
Maria, I hope it makes you feel a bit better too. Jean
It’s just right Jean, and it does help. Thank you.
So, so beautiful, Maria !
Thanks Diane.