Planning!

When I stress, I design quilts. Or piece quilts. Or applique quilts. Or even quilt quilts.

Right now my brain is handing me one design after another, as fast as I can write them down. They are not all winners. I only write down about half the ideas. I know I will never get around to the majority of them, but it’s interesting to see what my brain gives me.

The two best ones of the day:

War Quilt – a trench warfare scene done in sepia tones, land in black, sky in shades of sepia and the people in silhouette, and black explosions above the ground. Quilted into it are words: blood, death, soldiers, civilians, patriotism, nationalism, despot, and so on… enough to fill up a quilt.

Across – I haven’t figured out a way to do this one yet, but the image in my head is of an appliqued figure of one gender. Quilted into it is a figure of other gender, representing what they are inside, whatever the outer shell reflects. I don’t want it to be insulting or demeaning. I kinda want to piece the applique so it looks more Picasso-esque – the sense of the body being just not right, but I am not sure if that would be confusing.

There is a texture quilt forming in my head – all the same color, but different textures. I could only manage that if I could find white fabrics that would take dye in the same way, so the shades are damnably close. But I want it so much.

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I don’t think in pictures. I think in words, in textures and scents and sounds. The only things that creep into my brain in picture form are quilts (and the occasional random thought that just makes me go “?!?!”).  I have tried other arts and other crafts before, but quilting is the only one that truly produces a result that matches what is in my head. I doodle, but I do not draw. The few I have attempted have garnered only laughter, no matter how much work has gone into them. It’s not an innate talent, and the remembered humiliation keeps me from trying anymore. But quilting… quilting works for me.

I get satisfaction from a completed quilt. It’s work – designing, choosing fabric, piecing, quilting, and binding – but it is utterly satisfying to look at a quilt, and think “I did that. Start to finish. That was me.”  

 I put another quilt in the hoop the other day. It will take me a while – it’s 100  12” blocks, and each block will have a geometric design quilted into it with variegated thread.

But I know what will be next on the list after that. I am building my goals for the next year, and we shall see how I do again! (The next one will be for me – a Hawkeye pin-up pic quilted into my Minimalist Hawkeye Logo quilt. Sometimes it IS just for me).

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