As we brace ourselves for the hurricane-like storms that are
due to rip across the UK, I can’t help but be a bit sceptical when I look out
of the window and see the sun shining and a gentle breeze ruffling the leaves
on our autumnal trees. This is known as the calm before the storm. Personally I
would regard quilt-making as the reverse of this because in my experience the
storm definitely comes before the calm! Below is a case in point. The way I
work, I have the turmoil of haphazard piles of fabric strips strewn in front of
me. These are sifted through, turned over and sifted again in order to find the
exact strip I need for my continuous smudges of colour. I just can’t work tidily
and I would argue that if I was tidy, I would not be so creative. Does anyone
have any views on this; I’d be interested to hear them?
I have demonstrated
my working procedure for my painterly quilts before in earlier blogs, and it
certainly works for me. I suppose the down-side of it is that I have mountains
of strips left over after such a project. But then the up-side is that the guilt
of seeing the piles of left-overs make
me get started on another project …. And then I have to cut more fabric to get
the right transition from one colour to another … and then there are lots left
over …. Eureka! I think I might just have discovered the secret for perpetual
quilting!
Here is the penultimate square which to me demonstrates my
calm after my storm.
And here are the 12 blocks completed, with one colour
smudging pleasingly into another. I haven’t a clue where this is going, (if you
remember I started it as a therapy when my mother was starting to fail) and I
may just put it to one side now and let my subconscious start to work. To feed
my imagination, I will start to look at hundreds of pictures of quilts and
eventually an idea will surface. At the moment I am thinking that the small centre
square will be cut as a circle. Also I have decided that each square will be
worked and completed individually and then joined up at the end to make a
larger piece. Watch this space as they say!
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