My favorite quilt book, hands down, is Unconventional and Unexpected, Quilts Below the Radar 1950-2000. Likely if you’re reading here, you know it already, but if you don’t — run don’t walk. The works in that book are wild and unruly, colorful, and largely rich in wonkiness. Unexpected truly is the word for them. They surprise and delight.
This book may have contained the first quilts I ever laid eyes on where the surprising dichotomy (which I have since come to seek out) happened inside my brain. They were, I felt, ugly — or at the very least, they were surely not conventionally beautiful — and I loved them. These were not quiet, conservative, careful, muted conversations in cloth like so much of what I had seen and loved in quilting up to that moment. These were not subtle, not conventional. I believe there are only two two-color quilts in the whole book (both red and whites). These quilts made no safe choices. In fact (again, dichotomy) I found that many of the colors, the fabrics, and shapes on their own offended my aesthetic senses; but as a whole, seen in total, each offending choice harmonized to become infinitely more than the sum of their parts. I found them fascinating, and alive-feeling. Truly works of art in their own right; not merely home decor, which is how I thought of quilts (especially my own) up until that moment.
Quilting has been a journey for me, through the difficult, unforgiving landscape of my perfectionist, planning tendencies towards the wilder shores of… well, the unexpected. It has taken me years of internal (and external) dialogue to recognize that the quilts I love most in the world, those that make me gasp and want to look and look and look, are exactly these types of quilts. Quilts that could not have been planned. Quilts that are so clearly,… stumbled upon. Discovered, uncovered, born through trying, and experimentation, not premeditation. (There’s a life metaphor in there too, certainly. I’ll let us wade through that independently.)
After finally embarking upon, and then wholly committing to, this new way of working (beginning without knowing where I’m going), I knew that I would take on this most recent commission that way. But it still terrified me. With such an incredibly condensed timeline, there would be no time for massive changes of heart. There would not even be time for slight hesitation.
I’ve been making quilts for over a decade, and am only feeling within the last 2 years that I have begun to step into the pool of my own work. I am learning how to swim. I know how to make nice quilts; but I am only just beginning to learn how to make quilts that are my own. Could I really make something that would satisfy my wild quilt heart in two months?
The process was a blur. Make and make and make, only stopping to consider once a critical mass of material was reached. The final design, the layout, the sashing, the border — all arrived as solutions to the problem of what next, as opposed to steps upon any sort of predetermined path. There were points at which I was deeply disinterested, even disappointed, in some of the choices I had made; and moments of doubt. What path could take me somewhere I wanted to go, given where I found myself at that moment? I spent my fair share of time with the seam ripper. But indecision was not an option, and iteration as always proved the key to un-stuck-ness. Over and over again, I was surprised that trying something I assumed surely would not work — but would hopefully give me other ideas? — turned out to be the choice I made.
Today makes 4 weeks and 1 day since I completed the top, and last wrote about it here. In the interim I made the back, basted it, hand quilted it, bound it, washed it, and shipped it. This feels nearly unbelievable to me, despite being the one who did it. Also during that time I lost my “studio Saturdays” to a professional development course (requirement of the day job) that runs 8am-5pm, every Saturday until June 3rd(!!); not to mention other life nonsense ranging from myriad personal crises to emergency abdominal surgery for the dog. As such the blog (among other things) has suffered. I feel no shame! In truth I’ve been able to show up here today because I am home sick from said day job with a fever, sore throat and a cough, and no intention of getting dressed. It feels truly indulgent to take this moment to breathe. And to record. Here this object is, that was made in great haste during this long silence.
Because in the end, we arrived. Is it the quilt I set out to make? Not in the slightest. Are there things about it I would likely change, and change again, had it lived on the design wall for six months instead of one? Undoubtedly. Did she come into her own, a successful riot of color, whimsy and personality? I think so. I like her a great deal. In fact, I adore her. She was commissioned as a gift between friends of 20 years, and what an honor a gift like that is to make. As I said last month when I finished the top: it feels powerful and joyful to me, two feelings I hope the recipient is wrapped in when she receives it.
I was truly saddened by packing her into a box only 24 hours after pulling her out of the dryer (the moment I feel the quilt is truly “done”). I would have liked to spend more time with her. I tried to take a great slew of photos to remember her by. But I am ecstatic to have been “on time,” and for her to arrive at her forever home. And deeply excited about taking what she has taught me into what comes next.
