In recent months, I’ve had several opportunities to share my quilting stories. The emphasis is on sharing – listening to quilting stories from other people as much telling them about mine. There is the frequent conversation beginning with, “I remember seeing my grandmother make quilts,” but there are many different experiences along those lines. I also hear, “I’ve always wanted to learn to quilt”, “I have my mother’s sewing machine”, and “I find it so relaxing to sit and stitch.” I never hear, “what is a quilt?” Everyone seems to have memories of quilts in their lives.
I never tire of hearing about memories associated with quiltmaking, but I find that I learn about my own experiences in those conversations, too. When asked questions about why I do what I do, I am often surprised to hear my answer. I don’t always verbalize to myself the reasoning behind an approach.
A few weeks ago, I spent three days sharing Fifty-two Tuesdays, the quilt and the book at Mistletoe Market ( a festival-like weekend shopping experience in Perry, Ga.). As I repeatedly summarized my experience with that journal quilt, I came to realize how that adventure changed my focus from traditional quilts to story quilts. In the fifty-two weeks of 2015, I depicted a scene that represented an experience in my life each week. I also explored every quilting technique I could, in essence making it a sampler quilt, too. In so doing, I tried things that I would not have wanted to pursue on a large scale.
I learned that printing on silk fabric gave a luster to photographs that seemed dull when printed on paper or canvas. Now I’ve explored that more fully with several art quilts. (Examples written about here are Swamp Bird, Flowers for Phyllis, and Commonly Uncommon). Success with that approach gave me confidence to try something totally different. I had old photographs I wanted to print on fabric and wondered if I could successfully use old linen or cotton fabric in keeping with the vintage photo. It worked and I’ve played with that numerous times. (Some are Spinster Sisters, My Daddy wore Overalls, and Galadrielle.)
Shortly after that market experience, I was scheduled to share my work with a civic group. I’m accustomed to presenting trunk shows to quilt guilds, but groups of non-quilters are a new experience this year. The self-examination I had realized in the days at Mistletoe Market allowed me to better understand and therefore explain my transition from the traditional quilt world to the art quilt world.
Make no mistake, I still love traditional quilts and will continue to make those. But the freedom to tell a story in a small piece of cloth, using traditional quiltmaking techniques is very compelling right now.
As I started a new file for my 2017 journal entries, I couldn’t help but ponder the possibilities of this prime year. I even wrote a blog post entitled Prime Time, reflecting that since 2017 is a prime number, we should all use that to try something different. But I never published that post, because I couldn’t conclude with what I proposed to try differently myself. The list I made of 2016 efforts was so eye-opening, I just want to keep on keeping on with what I’ve learned.
I am assembling the blocks from Fifty-Two Wednesdays, my journal quilt for 2016. I’m still imagining what the journal quilt for 2017 might be – if I do the weekly quilt block again. I have a few days to decide; I will continue the weekly format I’ve done before, using Thursday as my deadline.
About the photos: hexagonal images are from Fifty-Two Tuesdays. Rectangular blocks are from Fifty-Two Wednesdays. Notice that the scenes from the 2016 quilt are not yet quilted. In addition to changing the shape of the block, I chose not to “quilt-as-I-went” this time, leaving the quilting until after assembly.
