Logic and Passion

Well we were promised/threatened with a storm this weekend so I brought in wood and hunkered down to quilt.  The storm fizzled here in the Valley but my quilting was successful.  I finished a quilt top based on the pattern Magic Tiles by Kathleen Bissett.  The random pattern brings surprises.  This started with a gorgeous fabric covered with red tulips and went from there.  You could never sleep under this active quilt but it will bring brightness to some corner of the house when it is finally quilted.   I loved the logic of the black and white and the passion of the red.

I also renovated a quilt top that has resided in a bag in a closet for a long time.  I will begin quilting it today and cannot wait to give it back to the maker.  This will add steam to the quilting.  Hortense will get a workout.  

This reminds me that quilting is all about creation and about sharing and caring.  It would be impossible to tally all the quilts made as gifts and given as charitable donations throughout the world.  As a quilt maker it is sometimes hard to let the quilts go as they contain so much of your creativity and love.  A friend likened it to letting your children go.  Quilters are not the only artists that feel like that; painters feel much the same about their paintings.  I watched this wrench through a close friend who does lovely paintings full of joy and colour and then now that my family is growing I think I may have to let some of them go as well.  But not now. 

In a seque creativity makes me think about something I have seen a lot of lately and that is criticism.  Strange that two words beginning with the same letter are at two opposite poles.  One soars and the other ties lead around the both the person making the criticism and the receiver.  One, criticism is easy to do; the other creativity takes time and love and caring.  Perhaps if one crowds ones life with creativity it will crowd out criticism in all but its most constructive form i.e. done with caring.  From high value to low; creativity; constructive to criticism without a purpose other than to drag down.

Quilt Memories

Well one quilt off the frame this weekend.  Of course the line up  of others is still there.  But this quilt is special.  It has memories in each stitch.  In 2011 I went to Scotland to visit an old friend.  One day I took off on my own into Glasgow to, of course, visit a fabric shop with a quilting section.  I love Glasgow and each time I remember the time before and it feels good to make a city not in my home country my own.  Retracing steps and making new ones is fun and loaded with flashes in the mind of places seen and remembered; coffee and cakes with friends and the warmth of welcome from them.

In the shop was a child's quilt based on a story book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  I have no children at home and mostly grown grandchildren so why would I want to buy a ready made panel of a child's theme.  Well I looked at everything else in the shop; chose fat quarters that fit into luggage and then I caved.  The panel was bright and colourful and appealed to the child in me. We should never ignore that call of the child.  It takes us back in time and it enervates our soul.  So the panel came home.

It could not be ignored on the shelf that housed it.  Fabric talks as quilters know.  It jumps out at you; it says make me.   This one was calling that it was a panel and easy to make.   I remember the dull winter day when my world needed brightening that the panel finally shouted at me to 'MAKE ME'.  Just cutting the colours and arranging them took me back to the fireside in Scotland; the wonderful conversations that have taken place there and the other family of daughter and son -in - law and children that are always in my heart.


Well it is finished.  I sat in the sun room in absolute quiet this Sunday except for light dog snoring where I could actually hear the sound of the sewing needle going through the fabric as I put the binding on.  Peace and bliss.  The binding had been auditioned with a good friend this side of the Atlantic.  Friends; friends; the wealth of our soul.  All the time I sewed my mind was flooded with peace and memories and my childish love of bright colours.  Quilts do contain memories.