Autumn in Texas and Mesquite Trees

So much is said about how the south doesn't have an autumn. How it goes from summer to spring without anything in between. That's silly, obviously. Our trees go dormant, a lot shed their leaves, and so on. It's just not so flashy or showy.

We make up for it in other ways - bringing a stereo-typical northern autumn into our homes and jobs as much as we can, as though we can cast some sort of autumn-summoning spell through sheer volume of FALL AUTUMN FALLING LEAVES PUMPKINS SCARECROWS, like the five points of a star in a summoning circle. (No, this paragraph isn't getting out of hand, why do you ask?)

I cannot claim to be any different. I get sucked into the whole "FALL" summoning stuff. This is my first entry for the year. It started as "What can I do with these strips?" and turned into a wall hanging that celebrates autumn. It's nothing grand, but I like it. The quilting is of falling leaves, of course. (What else could it be?)

And also of course, one quilt inspires another. Unlike a good many people, I love mesquite trees (aka Devil trees... very dramatic). They are survivors. They have massively long taproots, and actually return nitrogen to the soil, instead of removing it, like most trees/plants. Combine my love of mesquites with autumn in Texas, I want to make a mesquite quilt.

Growing up, we had a mesquite in the front yard. It stabbed all of us in the feet repeatedly, and picking up limbs and branches before mowing wasn't terribly fun. Outwardly, a full-grown mesquite isn't terribly attractive to most people - a rough and harsh black bark, a trunk that splits low, and heavy creaking limbs that stab and grab. Oh, and the beans. Sometimes it's like mowing over a rock.
But the inside is gorgeous. A beautiful red-brown with a clear grain, that dries evenly in all directions, and ends up strong - enough to be called Texas Ironwood.

My father offered to make me a quilting frame out of mesquite. Of course I said yes! OMG YES YES YES!  And I want the first quilt to be quilted on it to be an homage to the mesquite tree. Blacks, red-browns, and several shades of green - from the bright spring green of early leaves, to the darker, almost olive-y green. So I guess it's on to the planning stages for YET another quilt.

In other news, I've finally started working on Heart of (Lime)Stone. It seems that I am slowly amassing a list of quilts about Texas. *shrug* So be it!

S

Finishing

This is the year of finishing things. I hope.

But since I have already finished Black Widow and now I have finished Boston Molasses Flood, I'm going to call it the year of finishing things! I took one other quilt to a professional quilter, so I am counting that one as well, quite frankly. There are just some that ask to be done professionally.

Here is the "thrown over a chair" picture of Boston Molasses Flood. I am proud of this one - even though it took somewhere along the lines of 4 years to complete. At least and at last it's done! Woohoo! It is hand-quilted with variegated brown thread in waves, to symbolize the waves of molasses that flooded part of Boston in the early 1900's. The shape (as I may have posted before) is based on a map of damage done by the molasses. Each piece is one of many shades of brown. The overall effect is much more pleasant that I expected.

That's not to say it's going to any competitions! It's not that good - and I see all the errors. But I am concentrating on how nice the whole composition turned out. Even the binding complements the whole. Originally I was going to make binding and do a traditional binding. Instead, the borders are wide enough that I could trim the back and use the front as binding. I bound it front-to-back, leaving the brown to "run" around to the back fabric.

Next up on the quilting block is Heart of (Lime)Stone. I've got to pin it and hoop it, and then away I go again.

And on the piecing block... Ballet Folklorico. (I'm terrified, really I am).

S

Quilt is Life is Story

Last night I dreamt about quilts.

This isn't a real shock to anyone, I am certain. However, the trappings of the dream around the quilt made it more important - important enough that I remembered it when I woke.

I was in a... well, for convenience let us call it a cave or tent that was covered on the inside with animal skins. I was sitting on furs and working on a quilt. The quilt I was working on was only one of a stack, and the rest were unfinished - no bindings, rough edges like I'd stopped working on them in the middle. I was bound and determined to finish the one I was working on.

Someone asked me why I was working so hard. I replied that I had failed on the others, but this one I was determined to get done. They asked why the others were failures. My answer was "I don't belong there anymore." It was a bit gloomy, but resigned.

Another voice asked "Why not? Were they not part of your life?"

"Sure. But they don't want me anymore."

"But they were part of your life."

"Yes."

I looked down at the quilt I was working on and realized that as soon as I finished the quilt I would be dead - I was making the quilt of my life. The other quilts were parts of my life that were no longer current - things and people that had fallen away or left, or I left behind. I realized what the voice was telling me. My quilt of life isn't done. More, the old quilt pieces are part of the quilt I am working on now. They are all part of my life, whether I like them or not.

"But how do I join them?" I asked. "How do I quilt them together?"

And people filed into the cave/tent. All of them with fabric and needles and thread. All of the people I have known, past and present, and probably some that I haven't met, or those that I had an impact on without knowing it. They settled around me and started to work, pulling out the old quilts and starting to piece them onto the section I was working on. They joked and exchanged stories about me and each other, pointing out pieces of fabric that represented them.

It felt lighter and brighter in the cave/tent. I felt lighter and brighter. The colors of the quilt I was currently working on changed from browns to bright colors. There were darker patches and browns still, to be sure, but the whole was brighter. I could see where the sections joined, they were now adorned with embroidery and even conductive thread and LED lights so areas lit up. I forgot about binding off the section I'd thought complete and started to share in the quilting bee of my life.

*digression* In college, I had a professor who interpreted dreams. I asked him if he could help me interpret a dream (as in, do it for me). He shook his head and said "I can only interpret my dreams. You must interpret yours."

*back to the point* I think this is a fairly obvious dream. :) I get so caught up in the minutiae of life, like all of us do, that I forget all the other parts of my life. Not all of them were fabulous, no. But they make me who I am. They changed who I was into who I am. Regardless of whether I see some of the people from my past again or not, they encouraged or helped me along my way. Some of them may not have even meant to, but they did. They moved with me down my path, added pieces to my quilt of life.

I have been thinking about this all morning. I would like to make a quilt of my life. It wouldn't be a picture... not really. There would be patterns, and maybe the eye could pick out a picture from far enough away, like those photo montages of Abraham Lincoln. What would my quilt contain? What fabrics would I choose for people? Can you boil a life down into a quilt?

I think I will start. I know what I want to do. It won't be a fast quilt - nor should it be. It will be a work in progress. A work that lingers, to be bound by someone else who can bind around the rough spots and the curves of a rounded edge, to be laid over me in the coffin, to be used to shroud me as I am lowered into the ground or taken with me into the urn.

And while that last bit seems morbid, it isn't really. No one gets out alive. I am just working on my shroud well before-hand. And whoever has to wind me in my shroud will see all the people who had an impact on my life, all the people and memories that will go with me into the ground and into the unknown. When I go, I am not going alone.

S

Patchwork Fedoras and Self-Imposed Limits

I looked online for photos or patterns for a patchwork fedora, so I could get rolling on the Indiana Jones Quilter's Guild (IJQG). The patterns I found were pretty bad... and the pictures I found weren't even fedoras. They were trilbies. Different hat entirely! (I have this whole hat rant, but it's not really worth it. Suffice to say, nothing I found was accurate enough for my tastes). So for now, it's a nice plain fedora. Still looking. I suppose I could find an old one that's not in great shape and applique patchwork over it. That might be the best, really.

Finally finally finished the Black Widow quilt. Finally. (Did I say that enough?). I am now returning to hand-quilting the Boston Molasses Flood quilt. I designed the pattern, and will never sell it, because 70 degree triangles are dumb. The shape of each piece is taken from the map of partial and massive destruction from the flood of molasses, and the quilt is all shades of brown. Seemed appropriate!

At any rate, it is half-way hand quilted. I stopped to work on other things and just haven't gotten back to it. So.... my next quilting goal is to finish quilting and bind it. This is important to me because it will feel as though I am making a dent in all the pieced quilts! In fact, I have imposed on myself the rule that I am not allowed to work on piecing another quilt until I get another one quilted.

Now, two of them will go out to be professionally done. I don't know how the quilter will react to one of them, but the other should be an easy thing. I... I don't know about the first. It's a design I want to use for the front cover of a book about quilting the way you want. After all, that's what we are all about - doing things your way. We are not modern quilters. We are not traditional quilters. We are not art quilters. Or, rather, we are not ONLY any of the above. Some of the quilts I wouldn't know what to call. Except useful, mostly. But two will go out to be done by a pro, and that will knock my list down a few! (Yay!!!)

And then, I am going to tackle Ballet Folklorico. That should keep me occupied for a LONG time - I am trying things I haven't ever tried before, and I am not even sure I have all the fabric for it yet! But in my mind it is gorgeous, and I will work hard to get as close to that image as I can.


Here is the image that inspired the quilt. I love the way her skirt swirls, love the design and the movement in the photo. We shall see if I can get close to what I am looking for.

More photos to come - it's a long weekend, and there should be plenty of quilting and planning and sewing done, which means more pictures!

S