Vase #4: "Morning's twilight"

My recent approach to creating with fabric has been to use leftover pieces and put them together in a semi-random way – though I do pay allegiance to colour complementarity, the contingency that forms part of the established ‘necessity’. Structurally, I like the intrigue that might come from the random piecing of leftovers, and the variety of outcomes that become possible. It seems to me this is part of the creative process: take a risk, throw things together and then stop and look at what it is telling you. It’s where creativity can be gestated, emerging from the beginning of a design, from which a narrative emerges – collaborating in some way to open up all sorts of possibilities. This is an approach I’ve been taking with the last few quilts developed around the form of vases and previously coming from the theme of seasonal and daily cycles of change in the environment.

In pursuing these nascent ideas, I’m still finding it challenging to place what have been ‘leftovers’, cut to size according to earlier ideas of a quilt, and move them into a new space for a background on which to sit one of the vases. And it has occurred to me I’ve spent as much time undoing, unpicking the backgrounds for these small quilted wall hangings as stitching the waiting strips together. Unpicking is perhaps more laborious than being able to paint over something seen to be a mistake, colour in the wrong place, or encourage a different viewpoint. The matter is not quite so straightforward when stitching, but equally as necessary to achieve the desired expression.

Often decisions coming from events in life are not necessarily planned - at least for some. I for one, tend towards acknowledging the unforeseeable in my life’s journey, choosing the experience itself over a deliberate choice – though I don’t deny they can be seen as two sides of a coin (apologies for that tired analogy). Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophy in a nutshell declares that ‘nothing happens with any necessity,’ because so much depends on contingency, over free choice. Empty fabric vases already cut out are matched with the already cut flowers. In this case the purple daisies are arranged in the white vase that has been set in front of a suitable and appropriate pieced backdrop. Vase #3 has actually accommodated the first flowers cut from my existing fabrics, now assembled, quilted and bound by a border, and sitting alongside her two sister vases - previously posted (March 1 and 18 April). It really is like arranging a bunch of cut flowers in a vase, which always gives me great pleasure. It is then that the narrative starts, guided by the contingency of what is available. In this little quilt, the creative evolution between the vectors of necessity and contingency has resulted in a perception of growth under a newborn arising Sun.