• quilts
  • fiber drawings
  • prints
  • mending
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Newsletter
  • Menu

Elizabeth McMurtry

  • quilts
  • fiber drawings
  • prints
  • mending
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Newsletter

The constraint of efficiency

April 14, 2023

In my last post (I seem to be stuck on a two-week pace now) I wrote about taking on a new commission with a very abbreviated timeline. As a result, I’ve been pushing myself to make without hesitation; to believe that I can, and will, find my way to something that sings, without long bouts of contemplation (and second guessing). It’s never my preference to craft under a deadline (knitting, sewing, quilting or otherwise) but I’m always interested in using a constriction of some kind as an avenue for learning something. And a June deadline for a finished quilt certainly counts as a constriction!

I selected a palette from my existing fabric stash (the largest one I’ve ever had, thanks to the last two years of “fuck it, if I want it, I buy it” attitude) — and decided to start with sawtooth stars, as I said. I’ve been nostalgic for simple stars for a while, but I made this decision based on other strictly logical considerations, too: HSTs are a nearly infinitely adaptable base, and can be made very efficiently 8 at a time. And here you have the additional constrictions: No new fabrics; HST batching (normally, I never “batch-make” anything, having too strong a preference for variation); and most importantly, making blocks rapidly, trusting that once they exist they will tell me what to do with them.

I set out to make 25 stars (13” finished block), with a 5x5 grid in mind. That would bring us to 65” square for the top — my new go-to, favorite quilt size (more on that later). I powered through cutting and sewing and cutting again my 8-at-a-time HSTs in a matter of days, and began to make stars. Carefully and uniformly at first, then with more and more playfulness. By the time I had 18 of them, I felt I could start arranging them on the wall, which I did. And did, and did, and did.

It did not take me long to determine that the straightforward field of stars approach was not going to be it. While I love this style of quilt — and am determined to make many in my lifetime — my original palette lacked certain elements that I had failed to predict the broader applications of, in this style of arrangement. There was a “dinginess” to the overall effect; I lacked highlights, or any moments of brightness to move the eye around effectively. Frankly, at this stage, my choices bored me. I always need something,.. unexpected.

It was at this point that I added just a few touches of yellow — a single sunny triangle, and a few more in shiny gold silk. This helped, certainly, but I was still not excited. Nothing was pushing against each other the way I like best in quilt compositions.

I decided to consider sashing. It’s not historically been a part of my design considerations but I see it used to great effect often, and am trying to learn to use it well myself. I took all my stars down off the wall and instead tacked up large pieces of yardage as backdrop, to arrange the pieces over, thereby creating the option to look at different arrangements and different possible sashing widths or orientations.

The lilac, somehow, was my first go to. I have always ranked purple as one of my most hated of all colors, but suddenly there are shades of a specific light, dusty purple that I simply need to press into my life, find myself seeking out. (I blame acid yellow.) One of the many things I came home with from my birthday trip was what may have been a twin-sized lilac top sheet, though I can’t really be sure. (It may just be wide yardage that was hemmed? We’ll never know.) I pinned it up on the wall and put the blocks atop it. I loved the outcome, but I didn’t want to commit to the first thing I tried. I also was afraid of a giant sea of lilac — too twee? So I repeated the exercise with the vermillion gingham purchased on the same trip; and ooh, I liked that, too. And then, instead of having two options to choose between, suddenly I had a relationship to work out.

The lilac erased the dingy, “flat” feeling. The brightness of the lilac pushes against these neutral tones in a confusing way for the eye — because, I imagine, the tonal quality of these fabrics is nearly the same, but the brightness and vibrancy is different? I find this visual confusion pleasurable (in my developing aesthetic, I consider it important). Together they sort of hum, in your visual field, not creating an obvious foreground or background, but instead a sort of impression of float. By contrast you can see how this differs from the gingham quadrants, where the star blocks sit firmly visually “atop” the gingham background. (I find a similar effect — the foreground/background confusion — in the lilac tones of this quilt, which I love.)

After sewing the top together last weekend and putting it back on the wall, it also told me that “enough” is never enough. I went home that night with the question of “what else” still on the brain, drew out a black and white version on graph paper, and decided it needed a border. A brief experiment on the wall (above) a few days later proved the theory. So tomorrow is 7am studio Saturday, and we’ll see if we can’t make that a reality in one fell (ten hour) swoop.

All in all my goal is to have the first quilting stitches chewing into it by the time the calendar turns over to May. This will be an unheard of pace; from initial conversation of the commission to finished quilt top in 5 weeks. If you had asked me if it were possible (for me, personally) I would’ve said no. But I have in fact been deeply enjoying the breakneck speed, and the quick commitments. I have a secret goal to try to repeat this exercise as soon as this piece is down off the wall; I think Acid Vat (which you can see hiding in the shadowy corner above) would greatly benefit from this same treatment. Here’s to a new container — in this case, speed? — within which to learn something.

Comment

Loose ends and re-beginnings

April 01, 2023

Showing up every week has proven harder than I initially imagined, but I am still grateful to sit down here when I can. Last week I even started writing early — the day after I last hit “publish” — in an attempt to '“get ahead” of it in some way. But life remains hectic and full, and in these past two weeks seemingly fuller and not without some health bumps, as I imagine the changing weather foists on everyone. Spring has me feeling motivated: I have been mending holes, approaching the finishing touches on a sweater I started knitting for Kai nearly 2 years ago, and putting quilting stitches in a baby quilt begun when my friend got pregnant but whose daughter is now likely nearly two (older?). I even deep cleaned our kitchen pantry — though this was spurred on by a fear of a moth infestation — and let me tell you, if you haven’t done that in a bit (or ever) — you should do it. It’s a glorious feeling, a clean kitchen pantry, and it has inspired much satisfying cooking.

But in truth outside of these attempts at loose-end-tying I can hardly remember the last two weeks. On March 18th I spent a full 10 hours in the studio; I hadn’t had the little ritual I call “7am Studio Saturday” in a few weeks, and it felt good to be there. But it was also hard — the pieces I’m working on now are very personal. I’m grateful to be making them, and still, they are hard. I had set an intention to at least touch on the ghost piece that weekend; to cut some fabric, sew a few pieces together, and test my idea of how I think that work wants to be. I also told myself, “Acid Vat is available to me today!” and that I would pivot from the hard work of these heavy pieces to play with neon yellow as often and for as long as I wanted.

In the end I did neither of those things. I distracted myself on my phone periodically, I sat and let tears come a few times, and I walked my dog in the sunshine for about 30 minutes. But the overwhelming majority of those ten hours, I put my head down and I made a large group of blocks for that big blue piece that I shared photos of in the last post. I did not experiment with the ghost piece. But I know that time is coming.

Since then, unfortunately, I’ve had very little opportunity to be in the studio at all. And a few days later I took on another commission — one I am excited about, and also intimidated by the timeline of — and so after that 10 hour Saturday, the personal projects are officially backburnered for the foreseeable future. It will be very interesting to see how this new assignment plays out; I’m determined to work within a certain set of parameters for myself but also determined not to decide on the outcome from the onset. I’ve started by making some sawtooth stars, a block I’ve had a hankering to return to for the last year or so. Whether this remains the course, or I veer off, time will tell.

In the interim since I wrote last I’ve also started the process of looking for a new studio space; I’m on the waitlist for some studio buildings and also in a slow email correspondence with (surprise) a local church. I’m actually most interested in the church option, though it seems the least likely to pan out. While I’ve been deeply grateful — for a long and myriad list of reasons — to have my current space, it leaves a lot to be desired, including natural light, cleanliness, and dependable wifi. And with the rent raised on March 1st to a staggering $600/month, I just can’t justify that financial bleed anymore.

I’m also trying to revive the small crit group that Brittany Wilder started in the studio space we shared pre-pandemic, in the former YU. Five of us are scheduled to meet again in 2 weeks, for the first time in over three years. (Our group was just getting off the ground in February of 2020.) We want to come back together to talk to each other about our work. It feels like a deeply meaningful re-beginning.

Here’s hoping that all this energy stays. Here’s hoping everyone else is feeling it, too.

Comment

There is no behind

March 17, 2023

Time is moving fast, though maybe it always feels that way. I missed the last 2 weeks of showing up here, but I’m determined not to always write about my failure to write. I want to practice acknowledging gaps (though they don’t always need to be acknowledged), and moving on.

Life has been hectic, and it seems we have emerged from the slow heavy flatness of winter into spring at a full sprint. The clocks changed, my day job became unimaginably hectic overnight, the calendar is suddenly full. All at once I am too busy, and feeling chronically behind, and yet also all at once I feel momentum. I lean forward downhill and let my feet carry me. There is an energy in me, in my days. The months-long physical ramifications of my neurological stress event last year are finally gone. I hesitate to wave my hand and pronounce the depression of my last many, many grueling seasons over, but I harbor a nascent hope. The narcotic power of sunshine surely helps. (As do vitamin D and B-12, sunshine lamps, the right drugs, and generous support from loved ones.)

In my newfound energy, things are getting done. For the last many months I have been working on and off on a large commission piece, and last weekend I finally completed the top. At approximately 92” x 94”, said top took up the entire design wall in my studio, and so for months on end I have not been able to effectively stand back and observe my other ideas. The night the final seam of the commission piece pulled it all together, I stood looking at that blank white wall feeling somewhat like a kid on xmas — I couldn’t wait to go home to bed, so that the morning would arrive and I could play.

Last month I referenced a body of work I’m currently developing, with each piece operating both as its own container and also as a part of the whole. Right now there are seven known family members in this collection, but they may end up a larger — or smaller — group (my new rule being: fret not, not knowing thy destination).

It’s my memory that I began preparing — collecting, documenting, purchasing, washing, ironing, cutting — the fabric for these last September. I filled my enormous worktable with piles and piles of cut fabric; I made a few tentative blocks. For quite some time after I had done so, I felt a regret, a resistance — I didn’t know if I could make this work, or if I should make it. I didn’t know what it meant to devote myself to this idea, when it seemed probable that forgetting, that putting away, the seed of this work was the “right” thing to do. Not to give it air, and light, but to stifle it in the dark, and hope it would die.

So I took my time. I threw myself fully into other projects, joyful experiments in learning new things without the burden of embodying such personal experiences. Happy work; lighter, freer, and confidence-building. Months went by, and I ignored the piles on my table, shoving them out of the way when I needed the space.

And then the commission piece came down last weekend, and was folded neatly. The back came together in a few quick seams, joined the top in an orderly pile, and the wall was empty. And I was filled with an urgency — a desire — to return to this body of work.

These two, above, are the furthest developed of the family; I think of them as the focal point of the overall concept. I have been calling these pieces The Sisters. They are independent and yet wholly dependent on each other — they are made of the same materials in differing combination. They are two separate bodies, and yet they inform and speak to each other, influence and reference each other; they can both injure and protect each other.

Now that I can finally stand back and take them in, there are ways in which both works are currently failing my initial conception, as well as places where they have created their own unexpected successes. The blue piece is neither dark or cold enough for my liking yet; the red one too soft and gentle, not yet chaotic and unbound. Both will change; neither will likely end up where I anticipate. The plan is that they will both be much, much larger than you see here.

There is a third piece, a ghost piece, that will also be made in the style of these first two; I have not started her yet, but she rolls around in my thoughts these last many months. I first made a sketch of her in a notebook on 10/17, five months ago to the day. In truth I am most afraid of this third piece, as it asks things of me that make me deeply uncomfortable. But unlike last fall, I know that feeling is telling me that I must make the work; and I will.

__

PS. The yellow is an unrelated work; a joy-piece. Its name in my head is “The Vat of Acid Episode,” and it exists (at this moment) solely to delight me with color play. This is the piece I referenced in my vintage-fabric-buying binge, and recently on social media, looking for that perfect, elusive, barely-there-dirty lilac. When I need a reprieve from processing the heaviness of The Sisters, I have this bright bit of joy to dip into.

3 Comments
A giant and most beautiful begonia backlit by a foggy morning window

Deep winter

February 26, 2023

Well two days late and a week behind, I’m finally back here this morning.

I had intended to write last week from the privacy of a three night retreat at the coast, but it turned out the wifi I was assured of was not, in fact, an amenity in my cabin. In the end I was relieved by the disconnect, but it did mean dropping out of this habit unintentionally and only a month in. I’m pleasantly surprised to say: I missed it. This week, it feels less like an obligation and more of a personal treat. There’s been a lot on my mind that I’d like to record here, this time around.

Last week was my thirty seventh birthday. As mentioned above, as a gift to myself I sent myself away. I booked a stay on the coast of southern WA, and drove out of town mid-week with a car packed with everything I thought I might want to reach for. Clothing that felt powerful, and comforting, and warm; foods that felt nourishing but also like a fanciful splurge; a quilt to quilt, yarn to knit; candles to burn, cards to pull; oils and lotions for winter skin; three kinds of tea, a loaf of homemade bread, honey and cream; a journal, a sketchbook, and books, books, books, and more books.

I’m neither an all-out, please-center-me-in-attention birthday celebrator nor someone who finds it a difficult “holiday,” as I recognize some do. Throughout the years I’ve used it as an excuse to have a dinner party, or do something pricier than normal, but I’ve also been comfortable mostly treating it like any other day, and politely thanking people for their well-wishes. While my own aging surprises me (as it seems it does each of us?) it does not bother nor upset me, and I feel no raging resistance to the closing chapters of my twenties, or thirties. For a long time now, the two-choice equation has seemed to me exceedingly simple: age or die. This prevents me from feeling the same disgust at aging that the world seems to insist that we feel.

However, this year, this week in mid-February also held some complicated emotional landmines, unrelated to my own birthday, and which I won’t go into. But I wanted to feel both held and removed, and focused on myself during this particular span of a few days; I wanted to pass through the dates on the calendar in a particular way, as gently and lovingly to myself as I could. And so I went away, alone, for the first time in my life. From 2/15/2023 to 2/18/2023, I chose not to share my time with anyone.

Each morning I got up before the sun, and made a cup of tea in the dark, eschewing electric light. I opened my curtains and got back into bed with my steaming mug, and I lit a candle, or three, and I watched the day ease in. I read poems. I journaled. I took sauna each day and I stood under the shower head afterward like an addict of the cold — breathing, breathing. I walked on the beach, and in the dunes. I laid down on the soft mossy loam beneath the coastal pines and I watched the trees in silence for long periods of time. I ate pink grapefruit, quartered and salted, in my steaming, sun-filled shower with the juice running down. I read and read and read. I slept. I ate. I thanked my objects out loud, by name, for their generous service: my teapot, my mug, my coat, my slippers, my hot water plumbing.

It was an experience meaningful in ways that can’t be put into words. But I will take a moment here to encourage you, if you have never taken time away from the obligations of your life alone — especially if you are a woman, a wife, a mother, a person upon whom the obligations of others’ care consistently rests — go. Go away. Even for one night. Turn your cellphone off. Ask no one what they would like to do, or what they need. And give yourself, even if only for 24 hours, anything you want, whenever you want it. Be a deeply considerate, kind, gentle, loving, attentive, devoted, and loyal best friend, caretaker, or romantic partner — to yourself.

Maxine Kumin's book Always Beginning, held open on my lap.

From Maxine Kumin’s Always Beginning: “And I suppose a tribute to friendship is a good way to close out this month’s entries, a tribute to enduring relationships in general, to the loyalty that underlies them. Going on, is, after all, the ultimate pleasure of our lives.”

And with that, we now return to the portion of the record relevant to life’s fiber arts department. For on my way home that Saturday I stopped in a well-loved quirky Oregon coastal town and after failing to find a café within which to sit and read, I wandered into an antique mall. I had no real agenda but am always on the lookout for old quilts to ogle, or good Irish knitwear to inspect. Instead, I found an entire booth packed to the brim with vintage fabrics.

I spent a full ninety minutes in that booth.

A large shelving unit packed to the brim with multicolored fabrics

I pulled out and assessed nearly every individual fabric you see in this photo. The pile of my considerations is there in the front, stacked haphazardly on a stool in a leaning tower. The cuts are all different lengths, and listed in atypical measurements; “7 feet!” boasted several, including that red gingham at the top of my stack. So then the mental tabulation: what is 7 feet in yards, and what does that make the price-per-yard? Another squirrelly thing about vintage or secondhand textiles is that you can’t be certain about the fiber content, and I am very particular. Luckily, I am also confident that I have a better-than-average hand for assessing this, as I imagine most textile people do; still, you can’t be entirely sure.

In the end I only took home six (only! six!) cuts, but I harbor regrets about some things I left behind. Prices were significantly cheaper than new fabric (by rough calculations, about half) but that doesn’t change the fact that prices in general are currently so high, and wages so low. In combination with this three night retreat I didn’t really have the money for (but so desperately needed), and the fact that I have, truly, an ungodly fabric stash already, getting out of there at $45 had a guilty little sting to it. That said, I am very satisfied with my choices.

The six things I couldn’t leave without boiled down to:

  • Two cuts in pale purple, for a quilt idea I’ve just started. One is a pale lilac brushed flannel, and perfect — the other is a brighter, more saturated hue, but a straightforward quilting cotton and if nothing else will be just right for the back of said piece. You can see them both at the very bottom of that stack on the stool, above.

  • Another straightforward quilting cotton in what a loved one of mine comically refers to as “hospital green”

  • A thin, relatively sheer pale blue lawn printed with large scale pink and white florals; not colors I gravitate towards at all, generally, but so nostalgic and sweet I couldn’t leave it behind

  • That red gingham, which was the real roll of the dice. The shade of vermillion is absolutely perfect; a hard color to find, and a color with which I am wholly infatuated. But it was the priciest of the bunch, at $14 for the cut, and I did not feel confident about the fiber content. It was absolutely stiff, and unpleasant to the touch. But I pulled a few fibers from the cut edge and snapped them (had I had a lighter in my pocket I would’ve done a burn test right in the store) and I felt confident the threads were not poly. I decided I had a lot of hope about how it would wash up; it had obviously never seen hot water, and likely been folded this way covered in its original sizing for decades, so I took the risk. I’m pleased to report I am still confident that it is entirely a natural fiber, and it has softened considerably, though what exactly it is I may never know. It passes the burn test quite pleasurably.

  • And finally, my absolute favorite find; a two+ yard cut of a sheer, drape-y, highlighter-yellow, large-scale floral print made up of peach and buttery roses and spring green leaves. This almost certainly has some poly content, or is maybe entirely so. But it’s so uglybeautiful and so loud and so just right in its weirdness, that I am madly in love with it anyway.

An overhead shot of the highlighter yellow fabric sitting my lap in the car, surrounded by the skirt of my bright red dress .

One less-than-pleasant reality of these last two weeks is that I have barely seen the inside of my studio. Between last week’s trip away and this week’s record-setting snowstorm, February is sliding out from under me without much access to my workspace. I feel itchy about it; my ideas overrun me and I have a real drive now for some long working hours. I need to get a commission finally sewn together and off the design wall so that the two current “burning desire” pieces can finally take over, and I have some decisions to make about processes. Hopefully next week, some photos of actual sewing.

If you’ve made it this far, I applaud your endurance. There is a final thing that for posterity/archive I wish to record for myself before the month changes over, and so I’ll sign off with this list of current interests and obsessions: topics I intend to mull over and work through in the coming season. Thanks for reading. I hope you are feeling the the approaching gateway into Spring in your bones, the way I am.

  • Colors

    • Vermillion (eternally); approaching 2 years of obsession with unwavering interest. Three current ideas featuring vermillion; the twins, plus the erasure piece. The combination of vermillion and pink (nearly all tones and varieties).

    • Acid yellow. Not warm, not natural feeling. Searing, in between yellow and green; neon, electric, aggressive and unforgiving. Not played with nicely. Ambiguous and difficult to describe.

    • Pale, dirty lilac. Not of the bright, candied variety but of a warm grey/pink undertone, muddy. Pale. (Though the bright stuff may have its hooks in me too; considering knitting a mohair sweater in this color.)

    • Soft, dirty blue green. Between pale teal and sage, a soft cold green, a lamb’s ear color.

    • Obviously the combinations of these. The acid yellow and lilac combination has been muscling other projects out of the way to get to the fore but the recent realization of the lilac and vermillion combination possibilities is also percolating; deep navy as the binding agent.

    • Recognition of the in-between-ness. The defiance of categorization. Visual confusion, or uncertainty. People see vermillion as orange, not red; acid yellow they call “green”. The blue/green, when at its best, defies either category. The color lilac I love most is often misclassified as pink.

  • Blocks / design interests

    • Continuation of log cabin variations (all pieces of the family of grief work)

    • One-patch and nine-patch variations

    • Needle-turn appliqué

    • An burgeoning interest in a medallion quilt

    • Ohio or sawtooth star variation (as a gift idea; bluegreen)

Comment

Containers

February 11, 2023

I have been thinking about containers. What it means to contain.

Contain: to have or to hold; as in someone, or something. But contain also means to control or restrain, such as oneself, or a feeling. It can mean to accommodate, to carry, to have the literal, metaphorical or emotional space for a thing. To contain could be tied to safety, or belonging; to include or embrace. Or, it can mean to repress, suppress, stifle, subdue. Contain can mean to drown within oneself.

I am making some new work, work I believe will eventually be a family of multiple pieces. Each piece acting as a container. Containers of different definitions, containers with differing effects.

More on this as we go.

A pile of cut strips of fabric in varying blues and creams.

Last week I spent some time noticing recurring themes, in shape and color. The curves in the lines I’m quilting, and the arc of the rainbow in last week’s photograph. The colors of all the photos I took last week, blues and dirty pinks, and the colors of the materials I am sewing with now. Color has felt omnipresent and profoundly impactful to me over the last two years, and I am watching my relationship to it change and deepen, attempting to be open and noticing of it, everywhere. Color color color, such a dissembling experience. Color is a container! Color contains. It includes, embraces, and also represses. Subdues. Which reminds me: I should dedicate a post here to vermillion.

This week I am reading about Didion, and about art. I have become suddenly very interested in learning to make tiny baskets. I am looking forward to leaving home for a few days next week. I am talking to friends close and far about the deep struggles they’re facing — financial insecurity, health crises, relationship storms. I am doing my taxes, or at least thinking about doing my taxes. I am on the hunt for the palest, dirtiest lilac linen — your recommendations welcome. I am trying mightily to resist the siren song of acid yellow (too many irons already in the fire). I am writing here one day late, but I am grateful for this new practice, and for having kept it up thus far.

Our puppy houseguest has gone home, and so after two weeks away I am back this morning for the joyful ritual that I call “7am Studio Saturday.” I am eager to get to work and so this entry will be now both late and short. But there is so much to do, and I am feeling well enough to do it.

Comment
The city of Portland OR at sunset

Take the good with the bad

February 03, 2023

This past week was a mixed bag. Both lackluster and brilliant, at turns. I did not do what I hoped to accomplish and I missed out on some things that I had been looking forward to for some time. And the work I hoped to be writing about here — the work that was calling to me from the ether last week — is begun, but only just barely.

After my stress-induced neurological event at the end of last year, I am still facing some health complications. Mornings tend to be good, but nearly every afternoon the “migraine hangover” symptoms (postdrome) set in, and can be brutal. This entails an intensely painful aversion to light, sound, and movement; I am nauseated, and sometimes dizzy on my feet; my concentration leaves me entirely, my head throbs, and while an Excedrin will take the roughest edges off, it does not alleviate it. My computer and phone screen are permanently set to night mode (removing blue-toned light), I wear protective glasses, and I try to seek out quiet dark places; but this isn’t alway possible, and my evening commute home is sometimes unbearable. I’m about six weeks out from my night in the hospital, and still very much adjusting to my “new normal.”

While atypical, it is not unheard of for postdrome to last for weeks on end. It’s a mixed bag to learn this of course, because on one hand, it’s a relief to know that this surreal new physical reality is not a total abnormality and doesn’t warrant panic. On the other hand, it’s not encouraging to have no idea how long this debilitation will be with me. On my better days I have a what-are-you-gonna-do attitude about it, and I take medication, drink 50mg of CBD, take a walk in the cold to try to reset, and then attempt to work through it. On bad days, I get weepy, angry and overwhelmed, and go to bed. Sometimes at 3 in the afternoon.

View fullsize IMG_7529.jpg
View fullsize IMG_7519.jpg

This week my postdrome put me in bed on what should have been a studio-filled afternoon; it made me miss the opening of the GLEAN exhibition where a friend of mine is an artist-in-residence; it made me skip a phone call with my dad. It has not allowed me the deep dive into the new work that I am thinking about constantly, and finally feel emotionally ready to make.

But it also gave me some things this week. One night, too nauseated and light sensitive to ride the bus, it gave me an hour long walk in brisk air as the sun was going down. It gave me that view of my city, above, and the experience of walking actively through our winter crow roost; a little-known piece of Portland magic that I dearly love. Tens of thousands of crows spend the winter nights in downtown Portland, as the concrete density of the city center holds the temperature a few degrees higher than the surrounding woodlands. They descend on downtown together, and the sky is full of them at dusk, heading into the city from all directions. They are noisy, those fuckers, but even in my state I didn’t mind, because they are a thing to behold. (Those photos will get bigger if you click on them.)

For the family members reading this, don’t panic, my primary care physician is aware of all this. In fact last Friday night after a visit first to the clinic, then the lab for blood work, then the pharmacy for meds, it felt undeniable that the universe owed me some greasy french fries — and while sitting in the passenger seat of a car in a drive-thru, off of 82nd avenue, I was also given this view:

A dusty pink rainbow through naked winter trees in a cloudy evening sky

I am deep in the process of trying to take the good with the bad. I don’t want to make light of it and I don’t want to pretend like it’s simple or easy. This week was hard, and I wanted to write here at length about the work that wants to come through me now. Instead I slept, or I laid in a dark bed not sleeping, and I missed out on things, I had a few meltdowns and I got prescribed SSRIs. But that isn’t the whole story, so I am writing the other parts down, too.

Comment
A large, brightly colored log cabin quilt lies on a hardwood floor with basting pins securing it to the quilt layers beneath

A good week

January 27, 2023

I had intended to write about something else today, but this week had other plans. This piece has overtaken my every waking minute — in fact I’ve had a hard time tearing myself away from it long enough to be able to write this.

During the last 18+ months, in an attempt to help myself navigate life, I began a sort of journaling; something I haven’t done before. My attempts were not direct accounts of my day, but varied widely: sometimes I made notes on emotional states, sometimes I listed experiences or interactions, sometimes I wrote directives, mantras, or affirmations – depending on what I felt I needed at the time. On Aug 21 of last year, during a particularly difficult span of weeks, I wrote directives to myself about how to move through grief. One of my bullet points said: “When possible, force yourself to make art even though you can find no joy in making art. When not possible, be kind to yourself about it. Art will return.”

This week, to my immense relief, I feel that art has returned to me. I understand that this may be temporary. I know, through the brutality of experience, that everything is a cycle – grief, healing, times of rest, times of work. But this week, I am leaning into the embrace of my work with immense relief.

A close up of the log cabin quilt showing the hand quilting pattern of baptist fan, done in bright red quilting thread

This past Saturday I made the back for one of the quilt tops I wrote about last week, a project I’m thinking of as a turning point. On Sunday I moved all the furniture in my living room, swept the floors and crawled around on my knees for a few hours with pins and my hera marker. Before I ate lunch, I put my first stitches in. Today, my fingers are sore from hours and hours of quilting. I cannot tear myself away from it.

But perhaps the most relieving part of all this is that my attention is, in fact, divided. Because as called as I am to be here, under this quilt with a needle in my hand, there is somewhere else I’m itching to be – and that place is in my studio, reacquainting myself with a project I started in September. After a significant material commitment for a new series of works last fall, my ability to sit with those ideas abandoned me, and I could not bring myself to touch them. There was even a window of time where I worried if I had made an enormous mistake, and would not be able to continue with the project at all. But here, suddenly and without explanation, one piece in particular of that imagined series – and honestly perhaps the piece I was most intimidated by –  is holding all of my attention. I am rearranging the pieces, the colors, the components, over and over in my mind all day. I am excited about both the historical choices I’ve made for it and the new ones that are coming to me through the ether now. And I am beyond eager to physically get to work. To split all of my time between this piece, coming now to the end of the process, and that one, just emerging.

I am trying to say out loud to myself – and here now, to you – that I recognize that this bought of creative energy, this return to myself, may be temporary. I say that in the hopes that if the muse leaves me, that I will not feel so abandoned by her. These days, holding low expectations feels like one of the most loving acts I can do towards myself, and so I try to take that responsibility seriously.

But at this moment, all I want to do is work; and with that, I shall return to it.  

1 Comment
IMG_3596.jpg
IMG_6675.jpg

On not knowing where you're going

January 20, 2023

Well after a gung ho start last week – and truly a desire to do this more often, and overthink it far less – I’ve had a hell of a time “showing up” here this week. There’s so much on my mind, but not much I feel capable of writing about publicly. (At least certainly not without significantly overthinking it.)

So this week (or for months, who knows) I’m changing tack: away from the personal and into the practical – practical as in, relating to practice.

In October of 2021 I was piecing together a stack of nine patch blocks. They shared some basic consistencies: an identical center square, in a precious red fabric that has become my singular focus. The “cross” or “plus” shape in the blocks were done in neutrals – mostly the color of undyed linen, though some in brighter whites and creams. The remaining four corners were pulled from a stack of 2” squares that were a combination of leftovers from Big Blue, three pieces of an oxblood silk velvet, and many pieces of a yellow, large-print floral pillowcase I’ve had with me since I moved out of my parents’ house in 2004 and for reasons I can’t explain, have a deeply nostalgic attachment to. I didn’t have a plan for how I was going to use these nine patches, but I wanted to make them, and so I did.

By January of ‘22 I was making another set of blocks, also with a set of shared rules, but these I was making with a definitive final outcome in mind. I had seen a sun and shadows log cabin quilt online, of unknown origin, that I had fallen in love with and had decided to simply, unapologetically copy. I gathered fabrics in the same palette and started sewing blocks. I put them up on the design wall in an orientation mimicking the piece I was taking direct inspiration from. And I was instantly dissatisfied. 

In my quiltmaking I have historically always started from the final object. I have selected the blocks, mapped out their orientation and repeat, chosen the color palette, and determined the quilt’s final measurements. I have done the math and written out how many pieces I need of each size, and each color, and where they will go. I have always known where I was going, and then begun.

A reality of quiltmaking is that it takes a long time. At my absolute fastest, I have completed a quilt in maybe a little over 6 months. Most often, they take me a year or more – even the little ones. (There are a number of reasons for this: primarily that I work a fulltime day job, and my quilt practice is relegated to my few free hours in a week. Also, no matter my intentions, I cannot seem to work on only one thing at a time. There is, at any given moment, a minimum of three quilts in the works. Lastly, I hand quilt only, which can add weeks to that step of the process.) As a result of spending so much time with one idea, I have often found myself frustrated. I can – do – become bored by the idea I was enthralled with, long before the piece is finished. All that’s left, after all, is the execution.

View fullsize IMG_1336.jpg
View fullsize IMG_4310.jpg
View fullsize IMG_4015.jpg
View fullsize IMG_4164.jpg

With the red squares, I did not have a plan, and so playing with those blocks was obligatory. They went through four or five iterations; they were sewn and seam-ripped and sewn again. It evolved on paper, and on the wall; it grew, and grew some more.

Meanwhile the log cabin that started as a straightforward copy became, instead, a revelation. It’s been through many, many lives, and landed somewhere perhaps as far afield from the original plan as I could imagine, given that it still uses all the same blocks. That top is finished, now, finally, as of last Saturday, and I’m working on the back this week. And rather than bored by my full year with this project, I am ecstatic about it. It has its own language, its own playful demands. I am desperate to get my quilting needle sunk into it.

Every decision was made as I came to it. Not before. Everything was up for change, negotiation, reorientation, transmutation. Every piece moved, and moved again, until it sang and its neighbors sang, too. It feels as though this piece made itself. 

This new way of working has been a breaking open. Now, I can – and do – begin before I know much of anything. I begin before I’m ready, as they say. I now choose a block I want to explore, and a palette I want to play with, and I simply,... begin.

This will seem anything but radical to some of you. But for a brain like mine, suffice it to say that working without a roadmap does not come naturally. And even though I feel freed by this newfound, improvisational play, there are challenges. There are days when I feel exhausted by the mental work, by my brain, by making decisions at every step, weighing options, not knowing what comes next. More of my time, now, is spent looking at the blocks on the wall; simply standing back and observing them. Moving them, looking again. Sometimes, sitting for long periods looking at them; “doing” nothing at all. I rip more seams, much more often. I imagine the length of time it takes me to complete a single piece will only get longer. On bad days, this work is draining. On good ones, it creates flow state.

I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the old way of working. I don’t ever want to plan a quilt again, from start to finish, every measurement and every choice pre-determined.

I don’t know, anymore, where I’m going. And I don’t want to.

2 Comments
A dry, November fennel field, backlit at dusk

Control what you can

January 12, 2023

2022 was the worst year of my life.

I have spent most of the last month – while watching people share their year-end round ups – deciding if I was going to try to encapsulate my year in writing. Lay it out, to look at, pin it in place. But as of today, half a month past the end of it, I am simply not ready to do that.

My mental, emotional and physical health are currently very poor; that likely comes as news to no one here. One thing I can say broadly about the past year is that I spent all of it either under extreme duress or deep in depression. In truth, it’s been at least an 18 month stretch. It’s been so long now that over the last several months I am frequently engulfed by an intense panic about just how long it’s been. It comes on as an inescapable thought, a hopeless overwhelm: It’s been so long. It’s been too long. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t make it stop. It has to stop now. It’s been too long. It’s been so long.

These moments dismantle me. It happens anywhere, anytime, and repeatedly I find myself humiliated on public transit, or walking down the sidewalk, or fleeing a group of people to lock myself in a bathroom — collapsed and gasping, unable to breathe, or stop the tears. A trapped animal with nowhere to flee, and nothing to flee from.

One such wave overtook me last week, and I spent an agonizing cross-country flight alone, sobbing in my seat, unable to get any semblance of hold of myself. After two weeks, eight flights and three states worth of holiday visiting, I was totally exhausted and anxious to get home; but also deeply repelled by the thought of returning to my collapsed, heartbroken life. I had no greater wish in that moment than that the window next to me could easily be opened, to let me out into the cold dark air.

The physical ramifications of my mental state have been harsh. I’ve lost 15 lbs, and currently weigh less than I did as a teen. I’ve struggled with significant insomnia for the duration of the year. Fatigue is a physical presence in my body, like lead. In December the right side of my face collapsed and I fell to the floor in my bathroom, confused and unable to follow conversation. I spent the next eight hours in the ER, cognitively impaired and certain I had had a stroke, only to learn of the existence of a rare, likely (in my case) depression/stress-induced neurological event called a hemiplegic migraine. The after effects lasted more than a week. And, as a final farewell gift from the worst year of my life, a few days shy of New Years I woke up with an outbreak of shingles. I didn’t know much about shingles until now; most people aren’t at risk until a much older age than my 36 years. Shingles is agonizing. While it brings to mind images of skin rash, the predominant symptom is continuous, stabbing nerve pain. Let me offer my sincere, sincere hope that you never experience it.

Stress really depletes you. Your immune system, your overall health. Sadness does these things, too.

All of this is to say, I’m not yet able to write more about the year that just ended. I still wake up most days with my own heartbreak on my mind before I even open my eyes.

But in a strange roundabout way all of that leads here, to a blog page, and this pitiful little screed. I started (several times over) to write about screen time, and sleep, and eating, &c. But it turns out I already got on my soapbox here back in October threatening to change my online habits, and you all know perfectly well what the science says on ways to make ourselves feel better. We all know, we just don’t do it. My phone is certainly not the source of my mental health crisis. But I am desperate now — perhaps beyond desperate. This last year has eroded me to a degree that I do not recognize myself, and none of the realities that hurt me deepest are within my control to change. I cannot put back together the bigger, broken pieces. So I must change the things I can, even if those hurts are only the shallowest, most superficial ones. I am willing to adjust anything, anything at all that might make me feel any amount of better. I must try to give myself every kindness I can.

So, I changed my phone settings to greyscale. I am making plans to take off any/every dopamine-dosing app. I’m telling myself I’m going to write here, regularly, instead. That’s my plan. I will be kind to myself if it doesn’t happen. But structure is helpful; deadlines are good. Commitments fill the empty spaces.

I want to continue to share some things publicly because I have had beautiful experiences connecting with others this way in the past. I want to be vulnerable for a number of reasons; reasons I hope to elaborate on more in future writing. But right now, this space truly has only internal facing goals. This space is for me: to think out loud, to track time, to process, to document. This space is for me, but you are welcome here.

Maybe only 20 people will read this. Maybe 2. Currently, a little over 2,500 people “follow” me on Instagram. I love seeing your quilts, your art, your weavings, your textile practice, your handmade clothes, your lives, your food, your pets, your smiling faces. But in thinking about the early days of the internet – of the actual sense of connection fostered by social networking, vs the sense of alienation accompanying all use of “social media” – I realize that today, I would rather have a meaningful connection with 2 people than an audience of 2 million if it meant any reduction in my health.

If you, too, had the worst year of your life — I see you. I have nothing to offer other than the assurance that you are not drowning alone. Here I am, waving to you from just there, in another part of the roiling, black sea. I see you. If it is any consolation, I’ll be here.

1 Comment
P1080874.JPG

Back to basics

October 31, 2022

One night, up way too late and sucked into the blue light of the infinite scroll, I discovered a new-to-me, quilt-centric corner of the internet. Gorgeous photos, sumptuous and tactile textiles, breathtaking landscapes, everything just so. Antique this. Perfectly-faded that.

I was entranced. And enraged. I hated it; I couldn’t get enough of it. I sent screenshots to my best friend writing, “this makes my skin crawl, I hate this, I hate it! and also why doesn’t my life look exactly like this.”

This was June, 2021. So much has changed since that time. But when I found my notes on this experience, I thought it worth trying to sift through those same feelings. It’s also true that a lot of those feelings, and internal dialogue, have led me back here — to blogging. A practice I have been telling myself I would reconnect with for years, and am finally wading in to.

There was a time (so many years ago now) when I thought that “building an audience” on IG was something I should aspire to. It didn’t feel feasible, but it didn’t seem impossible. Other people did it, somehow. And after quitting a job back in 2017, I told myself I wouldn’t go back to cog-in-a-machine desk work; I started contracting, working for two local woman-run small businesses and telling myself, I would learn from them. How to succeed, how to survive off your creative passions. And eventually, that would be what I was doing.

In the years between then and now, many an artist has told me verbatim that in fact, what they “sell” is the idea of an artist’s lifestyle. Of creativity, or freedom, of beauty and appreciation, of “slow” and “authentic” and so many of these other noxious hashtag terms. That the goal is to stoke the feeling of desire (read: the envy, the feeling of lack) in those of us who feel our lives look different but who want to believe that by owning some part of this creative fantasy, we can tap into this vein. It’s not as if I didn’t know this already, even if I hadn’t articulated it to myself. But I have to tell you, hearing it out of other women’s mouths, directly — about what it takes to survive as an artist, about the ongoing marketing of themselves, more so even than their work — is a hard thing to stare down.

Like many fellow Instagram users, I have only become more agitated with the platform in the year since I found that particularly highly-curated quilt-centric account. As of this writing it has become a video-centric platform, where I see as many advertisements as I do friends’ photos, and to which I recognize I have a frightening dopamine addiction. I haven’t been able to walk away from it entirely (yet), but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not — and never will be again — the community-platform I long for in terms of reaching other makers, quilters, artists, knitters, textile enthusiasts, art-appreciators, friends, strangers, &c. I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I cannot behave there in the ways the algorithm requires to “build an audience.” I also know: that is perfectly acceptable to me. I have no internal conflict about whether I “should” try. (An aside: this is in no way meant to shame those who do. Decisions about digital presence are as complex and variable as the lives of each person making them. I simply know, unequivocally, that that platform steals my joy; so I know, simply, that I must work to be less present there, not more.)

Work, and life, have been infinitely more complicated in those years since 2017. I am back at a “cog” desk job. I can say, I believe entirely honestly, that I no longer harbor any interest whatsoever in making my art practice my livelihood. These have both been their own large, tumultuous transitions. There are both unfortunate and fortunate elements about both facts. But one fortunate element is: I don’t have to try to sell the idea of myself, of who I am, of my “artist’s life.”

I don’t want to create another place on the internet that sells someone the fantasy of a picturesque life; I do not have a picturesque life. I am messy, my life is messy, and there are threads (literal and metaphorical) everywhere that if yanked, threaten to unravel the whole thing. And why yes, I did spend a few years as a photoshoot stylist, and yes I have (and do) edit my own image-sharing very carefully. Guilty, guilty. And yet, and yet. I have a deep desire to resist, to rage against the continued, careful curation of how we present our lives to each other. I have a deep desire for a more fully human picture, more humanity, more transparency. I have a desire for connectivity, and community.

I have no understanding of how to succeed in this task.

But in the interim, I am returning here. To long form writing on the internet. To a space away from a platform designed to shorten and dilute our attention, and sell us things, especially our discontents. To a place one can choose to visit, purposefully, if one desires — and ignore easily and entirely if not. If you are here, I am so glad to have you. I have blogged off and on since the days of Xanga, in the early 2000s, going on 20 years. And while it is clear that the heyday of the blogosphere, and the communities built there, are long behind us — I’d posit that the utility and beauty of its simplicity are not. And truly — whether two of you join me here, or two thousand — it offers me more hope for what it is I believe that I want, that I am reaching towards, when I am moved to share my work.

Thank you for being here.

Comment
EMcMurtry2020.jpg

Color and other complexities

May 20, 2021

Sometimes I Learn Something, 2020.

As with everything else about our lives, the pandemic significantly altered my plans for my making and art practice. I had been excited about committing to working with found / reused / repurposed textiles, and moving away from purchasing new fabrics as much as possible. My ideas around waste, reuse, consumption, deterioration, repair, and emotional attachment to textiles run concurrently through my drawing practice, my mending practice, and my sewing practice, and I was excited about taking this next step in embracing new restrictions in quilting.

Instead of course it became unthinkable and largely impossible to spend hours sifting through used / discarded clothing bins, or thrift stores. And yet, simultaneously, because of my anti-waste proclivities, I had piles of "new" fabric bits, gleaned from friends’ clothing-sewing scraps and my time at a small home sewing brand. The main problem with this? Few to none of these are fabrics that I would have purchased myself. I am, and there’s really only one way to say it: an absolute asshole about color.

My personal color palette is outrageously narrow, and HIGHLY particular. It goes like this: Reds but ONLY WARM reds, fuck a blue undertone, same for all pinks; fuck orange; ehhh yeah some yellows but very few of them; fuck green; fuck blue UNLESS it's a true peacock deep blue-green (nonsensical, I know), fuck purple. Yes to neutrals, but again, warm-undertone only. Get out of here with your "cool grey" that shit is blue, or worse, purple, and fuck blue and purple, remember?

So what do you do with an enormous pile of orange fabrics when you absolutely loathe the color orange?

You accept the challenge, I guess.

This little quilt is called "Sometimes I Learn Something" (the implication being, of course, that sometimes I don't). Despite the fact that it is absolutely ORANGE, in the end, I love it. I'm a little disappointed in my reliance on navy blue to help push it to an acceptable-to-me place; this feels like a cop-out, a predictably easy answer to a more interestingly complex problem. Regardless, I'm proud of myself for trying to continue to expand my comfort zone.

Comment
Prev / Next

oh, hi.

Writing has always been a part of my process and my processing. Thank you for joining me here.


Instagram

Haven’t been posting, haven’t been blogging, but have been working hard and fast behind the scenes. 
The commission is done in record time and ships next to @brittanyvwilder for photos before she’s off to her forever home 💫
Here&rs
One of the most unfinished rooms of the house featuring my patented decor style, a-quilt-in-progress on any available surface. Not to be outdone by our neighbor’s yellow box truck, and the world’s ugliest light fixture — still someh
From conversation to quilt top in 26 days, hot damn. 😮‍💨
🌟
This one feels really joyful to me. ~And~ I used that gingham I was afraid to buy over my birthday. 
🌟
(Blogged about it, link in profile, yada yada)
🌟
Time to clear the wall again ?
7am studio Saturday
Dark evening messy studio shot.
Two weeks behind at blogging, absolutely slammed at ye ole day job recently, and a bunch of other life “busy”-ness have been getting in my way, but. But. This past weekend I finished the top of a giant comm
I went away last week and I was unexpectedly internet-less (and it was glorious) but it did mean I missed the week’s blog post. I’m back on the horse and apparently I missed writing to you/myself because this week’s is a doozy.
.
Go
Missed blogging last week because I took myself offline, spent three nights away totally alone, my first solo trip, romanced myself for my birthday, burned candles, read whole books in one sitting, took sauna, got up before dawn to watch the days eas