Towards the end
of 2016, I started work on a personal story quilt for long-time friend, Robyn. She
had told me what she would like included, and I started with a large to-scale
sketch of what I thought I might create for the background, but it seemed to
not want to come to fruition in the usual way. For the next few months, it
continued to cause me some angst that nothing inspired a space on which to
arrange the symbols that Rob had requested be included. It’s not that I usually
start out with a pattern, or even a clear idea when making a personal story
quilt. I have a few ideas to work with in the form of words, and one thought
usually flows seamlessly on, connecting to another without too many hindrances,
being identified as images. It didn’t happen so easily this time.
The symbols Rob
wanted in the quilt spoke for themselves, being quite literal, and I had no
trouble finding ways to bring them into form, almost immediately following
receiving Rob’s commission. A Celtic knot into which could be woven the colours
of the maiden, mother and crone had to be set into a public triangle. The dove
from Iona took on a few metamorphoses until the final form. But they needed a background, a place
to become part of the landscape of the whole quilt, which did not want to come
into form according to my original plan of using the florals with the colours
of the ascending chakras, and the blues as showing the movement from darkness
to light.
I had rummaged
through my large collection of floral fabrics and selected some out, which for
some reason I had begun to cut into eight by eight inch squares. I did the same
with various shades of blues showing stars, thinking to mix them to form a
background on which to place the symbols Rob had suggested. This approach of
cutting regular sized squares was most unusual for me. I am used to taking an
intuitive approach, allowing the inspiration to give shape to my work – with a
more usual free-flowing design. I tried many arrangements, including
free-cutting the blues into the florals, dark blues with the reds and so on,
having discarded the plain hand-dyes originally selected for the chakra
colours. Then thinking florals down one side, blues on the other, and even
free-cutting through layers to intersperse the florals throughout the
background with the blues in no particular order.
None of these
attempts worked for me, materially or artistically. I wondered if my brain had
had a keg or two worn down due to the immunotherapy, as it seemed very
difficult to think through, let alone resolve, the confronting blockage. They
do talk about “chemo brain”. Why was it seemingly so difficult to bring into
form a simple background on which to place the symbols already taking shape? In
desperation to make something - anything - happen, I cut the floral square in
half to make rectangles and joined them in what seemed to be ascending order of
the chakra colours for which I had chosen them. Halving them again I found
myself with a frame. Now, I had boxed myself in, cornered myself within a
frame, something unthinkable to me and my usual organic, intuitive process!
Very
many mistakes were made in the process of making of this particular quilt,
something that is quite unusual for me, nor something that I like to admit. I felt
constantly stymied by decisions relating to dimensions in particular: in spite
of making measurements, the background fabric was cut too
short, and had to be added to either end. Then the stabiliser used to back the
mandorla of roses for the free-machine stitching really should have been spread
across the entire back of the quilt; the spray on adhesive - just forgot about
it - could have been used to great advantage, in melding the layers before any
free-machine quilting had begun. Here I want to thank dear friend, Kerry
Beaumont, for helping me out with the free embroidery machine quilting of the
roses. I am so terrified of using this technique - in case I make an ugly
mistake – that can’t be unpicked! As it turned out I did quite a bit of
unpicking in other areas!
I won’t go down
the track of enumerating the other mistakes…but mistakes lead to new ways, new
discoveries and realisations. According the spirit of ‘wabi sabi’, nothing is
perfect, permanent or complete, and there is beauty to be found in and through
the various states of imperfection, impermanence and incompletion. Thanks to
Jennifer Rolfe for alerting me to this ancient Zen philosophy of aesthetics and
life in general. Nevertheless, I feel that regardless of the mistakes made and
hesitancies pushed through during the process, this quilt has come into its
own, holding together to honour Rob’s amazing life in spite of the challenges
encountered along the way – hers and mine!
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