Instead of writing about my “Surrender” Quilt I thought I would explain it in a video. The quilt is already sold, and I’m still working on it as you can see in the video.
I’ve been enjoying making these videos with Jon, he seems to know just the right questions to ask when I think I don’t have anything else to say.
There is one part of the story that I forgot to tell in the video. It’s the dream I had after I fell back to sleep.
In the dream I was in a small cinder block room, with a high ceiling and no windows. I felt trapped but I didn’t panicking I just thought I’d fly through the walls. I made myself light and started to float. I can still remember how intimidating the grey cinder block walls were. How thick and impenetrable they seemed. As I floated up, I turned around and saw there was a mirror on the opposite wall. I knew that was easier to move through than the cinder block and easily floated through it to freedom.
It was almost time to get up. I could tell by the light in the windows. But I nodded off again, my head on Jon’s shoulder. It was only a few minutes before I woke up again. And in that time I saw the quilt that I’m working on, and it was finished.
Even after immediately waking up, I couldn’t recall it exactly, but I did retain the essence of it. The look of it. And an important part of it was faded denim.
Now I know Jon has more jeans on his shelf than he ever wears. I know because I do the laundry and the jeans on the bottom of the pile never get washed.
I suppose I could have just taken a pair and he probably never would have known the difference. But I wanted the pair he had laid out the night before, to wear today.
They’re the right color with just the right amount of fading and wear.
I told Jon about my dream. Being a creative himself, understanding the creative process and having great respect for it, how could he deny me the material I needed for my quilt.
I have to say it’s been an ongoing thing. All day.
It’s not like I was going to cut them off of him when he took a nap, like he accused me of wanting to do. But I couldn’t help eyeing them, picturing them in my quilt. Actually they’re the next step, I can’t go further on the quilt without them.
I even tried reverse psychology. We’ll stop at a thrift store on the way to my mother’s, I told him as we got in the car. (We visited my mom for Christmas today) I’m sure I can find some jeans, hopefully just the right color, ones that look just like yours.
But there’s some spots of paint on Jon’s pants, the blue from our ceiling in the dining room and some salmon from the table. That’s impossible to replicate.
He hasn’t agreed yet, but he’s open to the discussion. I may have to pay dearly, but what ever we agree on, I know it will be worth it.
Oh what I do for my art.
The quilt that needs Jon’s pants. Can’t you just see it?
I sat in my chair looking at the quilt. Once I cut out the piece of green fabric that separated the strips of white and sewed it back together I knew it was done.
As I looked at it I kept thinking of those little plastic puzzle games you’d get as a prize at a party. The ones where you slide the plastic squares around to complete an image or word. A part of me wanted to do that with the squares in this quilt. Move them around, as if they needed to be adjusted and when they clicked into place, they’d open up a whole new world.
And there are clues everywhere, symbols and signs daring me to make sense of the whole thing. But this quilt asks more questions than it answers. Like a dream that doesn’t make sense when you try to explain it to someone, but when you were in it made perfect sense.
The Gee’s Bend Collective in Gee’s Bend Alabama where people come to buy and see the quilts.
A couple of people sent me this poem by Arlarie Tennille about the quilters of Gee’s Bend. I think it tells this part of their story beautifully.
The Quilters of Gee’s Bend
Seems like that old river tied itself in a knot just to keep black folks there at Gee’s Bend while time and fortune swept on by.
And Master Pettway gave those folks his name, but stripped everything else he could. Left just scraps, but they were used to that.
So those hands that hardly needed something else to do unraveled their worn-out world. Pieced together remnants of Africa and raggedy dreams to make something new.
Let dress tails dance with britches—heat from the cotton fields pressed deep in their seams. So tired of plowed furrows, they let their stitches bend now and then just like that river. Nothing perfect, yet God was in the details. And the quilters called that making do and visiting and keeping warm and pulling up memories each night, till one day they were told— we call that art.
I started the third quilt for Sarah today. This is what I have so far. I decided to cut some of the logos on the t-shirts in half or thirds depending on how wide a strip of fabric I wanted to use. (you can see it on the red strips around the checkered center) I like the way the words and pictures are less representational and almost become just a design. I plan to do more of this, if it works, as I finish the quilt.
I am unusually tired tonight, think I’ll go to bed early and dream of what I’ll do next.
Finished up the front of “Cat’s Pajamas” today. Here’s a detail of one of the small squares on the bottom.
I used so many different types of fabric together including Kim’s green sweater. There’s denim sewn to cotton knit to sweater and sweatshirt and polyester. My Viking sewing machine has made it all a dream. It has a bunch of different setting from light knit to heavy stretch, so the tension is always just right with no puckering or stretching. I couldn’t have made these quilts as easily and quickly without it.
Sometimes I dream of waterways. Ancient canals that are narrow with high walls and the water flowing as if through a labyrinth. I’m on a small flat raft, just big enough for me to sit on, floating on the water. Once the raft was a carpet, another time it was a book. The canals have a beauty and romance about them and it’s exciting to be riding on them.
Looking at my new quilt reminds me of this dream. Of water flowing through man-made canals, waterwheels and aqueducts. But also that it holds a secret to be deciphered. Some mystical knowledge to be unlocked.
The difference between a maze and a labyrinth is that a maze is a puzzle, a confusing place that’s designed to make it hard to find your way out. A labyrinth has one way in and one way out. It’s not designed to trap or confuse, but provides a winding and meditative walk that is safe and comforting.
In my dream I have no control over where I’m going, yet I don’t have the feeling of being out of control. (like in some of my dreams where I’m driving a really big car and the brakes don’t work) Like a labyrinth, the waterways feel safe and I trust that they will take me where I need to go.
I think the dream and the quilt are about finding my path of least resistance and trusting it. About not having to struggle for what I do to be good, for me to be good. The way a meditative walk through a labyrinth can unlock the mind and heart through ease and patience and trust.
It makes me think of the beginning of Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”……
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
Labyrinth detail “Wheel” ( a machine embroidered pillow cover)
Labyrinth detail “hieroglyphs” (a hankie)Labyrinth detail “Star” (this is a hand stitched quilt square that someone gave me)
I finished tacking my quilt Autumn Oak Leaf yesterday. It’s already sold, going to writer and artist, Rachel Barlow, one of our Common Thread Give-a-way artists. (Click here to see one of Rachel’s really funny cartoons, but only if you want to laugh). She told me if she were to make a quilt for herself, it would look like this one. That pretty much tells me that it belongs to her.
This is a close up of the back of the quilt. I had a big piece of the horse fabric and cut it into three pieces to design the back. I added the two other pieces of fabric picking up the colors and breaking out of the grid on the horse fabric.
This is how the quilt began, with the blue square on the tea-stained hankie which has one of Lenore’s bandana’s under it. (same as the red, brown and white flowers in the bottom left corner). For just this piece, I tied my tacking yarn in the front to make the knots. I was thinking of my dream of the small oak tree and the leaves going in the four directions.
It’s that color of some oak leaves. Not red, almost pink, with some of that oak leaf brown. This weekend I felt like hibernating. It was cloudy and cold. We had plans to go out both days, but decided to stay in, with a cup of tea and book, a cat on the couch, both wood stoves glowing. But those oak leaves, the softness of their color compared to the blazing oranges, yellows and reds, they speak of gentle warmth and comfort.
My oak leaf inspirations
At the beginning of the winter I decided I was going to try and experience the change in weather as if it were happening for the first. Without the dread of dreary November and the expectations of being perpetually cold and craving the sun. Then I had a dream. It was of a twig of a tree, about two feet tall. On it were four oak leaves, representing the four directions. The leaves were velvety soft in texture and color and when I touched the one closest to me, pollen came spilling off it into my hand.
That’s what I was thinking about when I designed this quilt. The other piece that I made with the drawing of the tree, called Hibernation, which I wrote about earlier this week, will be the beginnings of another quilt. I found that they didn’t actually work together, but are two separate pieces.
So my new quilt is called AutumnOak Leaf. All the solid reds and tans are corduroy, making it warm in color and fabric. The icy blues remind me of the cold winter air. It has pieces of an old patchwork pillow sham in it and tea-stained Vintage Hankies. Lots of the pattens on the materials I chose just happen to be leaves.
I’m waiting for some batting to come in the mail then I’ll back it and tack it.
