First cup of coffee
aroma wafting upstairs
ready to be poured.
Steps with many slugs.
Sidewalk with slugs a’plenty.
But two on my car?
The air is freshened
by last night’s steady rainfall;
an edge of dry chill.
Someone recently asked me what kind of quilts I made and as I tried to explain this no-where land between “Traditional” and “Art Quilt” I finally said — I don’t really care how people describe me. I am a contemporary quilter. Someone down the road in time will figure out what we were all doing. In the meantime I seem to do my own thing and occasionally serve to explain a couple of things to the people who don’t want to claim me or what I do. One, that “traditional” is a reflection of people doing what they wanted to make things, express themselves using the materials and tools and ideas they had. And two, that all this “art” stuff has been done before: printing on fabric, putting photographs on fabric, surface design, embellishments etc. Not new. Been done before. Stop thinking you made it up. Or at least stop being rather snobby about it. And three, just do the work until it is your own. — Mary Beth Frezon 2010
Yup, I did.
This new project is now sewn together two-thirds of the way in one direction. Long-time readers will remember that I sew everything together first in columns and then across in rows. It happens that this quilt is vertically oriented and frankly, sewn together in this first move, it’s too large to be hung vertically and barely fits pinned up horizontally.
But there it is, stuck up corner to door frame on the wall. I turn my head or the image on the camera to see it right side up again.
So far so good. I only found one “mistake” while sewing: two identical fabrics side by side. That was easy to fix.
I have reached the point where if the piecing could be magically complete I wouldn’t complain. I spent a bit of time tonight thinking I should sketch out a quasi schedule to make sure this gets done when it needs to be done to give me time for quilting etc. Fine lunch time project for tomorrow. Meanwhile another piece of my brain had a different thought altogether for the next thing I’d like to try.
Oh dear.
I measure the seams
they are a mere quarter inch
but they look too large.
As the design grows
under hands across table:
is it my vision?
I try to listen.
The tale’s words spool out.
I listen harder.
Throwing little squares through the sewing machine, two at a time.
I was suddenly stricken by the idea that my seams looked too big. Way more than a quarter inch. Ick. What the heck was I doing, or not doing. I was using my quarter inch foot and doing my best to keep it all very repetitive.
I grabbed a little six inch ruler with all kinds of quarter inch measurements on it. lay it down with the edge lined up with the edge of a pair of squares, sewn together. the nearest parallel quarter inch marker lay just beneath the line. Right where it should be. Each one I tried was the same.
All good.
Listening to Fahrenheit 451 so maybe I’m just distracted.
What’s the sound of one hand clapping?
