sunshine and shadow

November 4: Mending my father's quilt for an hour, it's sunny outside.  The waves still come in, the aspen leaves still tremble.  Ned still brings me coffee.

November 5: The mending I did today was my navy house-coat and Dad's shadow-sun quilt.

November 6:  I'm mending my dad's quilt again.  It really is therapy to work with colour and sew squares.  Squares are such firm shapes.   It's a feeling like no other.  Very healing.

November 12:  I'm at my window, mending dad's quilt and feeling peaceful, thinking that it's nice to mend.  It's nice to add to something that already knows what's what.

I do love creating new work because it's such an adventure and it's gives me an exciting feeling.  

But not this week.  I am not able to be tentative and unsure this week.  This week I'm staying with one and a half inch squares and satisfying juxtaposed colour.  

November 15:  Been mending dad's quilt ALL DAY.  It's very dark and rainy and wavy.  I listened a bit to The Handmaid's Tale but mostly it's been silent work, and I felt myself sink into the November darkness.  Ned spent the afternoon repairing the little-girl bicyle we've saved for so long.  "You never know" he said. 

November 16:  Snowing today.  Apparently the article in quilting ARTS magazine is published.  Two or three people told me they've seen it.  I have not seen it.

I have a new idea.  To begin a linen tan and pastel sunlight and shadow quilt using my dad's for inspiration, one 9-patch at a time.

November 21:  Ask people who I have gifted quilts to over the years to please send them back to me and let me mend them.

November 23:  I am in a shift.  I am slower.  Zoom-type meetings drain me.  I'm emptying shelves so that I can find space for journals and I'm mending family quilts.  Those things are all I have time for.  

At one of the recent Zoom conferences, Marlene Creates was part of the panel and she asked the hard question.  "How can we keep making art in a world facing climate disaster, in the midst of pandemic, social unrest and looming fascism?"  And then she answered herself:  "We have to continue because art can move people in ways that science cannot.  We have to re-examine our own cultural practice and lead by example - not wasting, not poisoning."  

It was inspiring to hear her say that artists should look at their own practice and lead by example.  Heal through our work.  And it occurs to me that there is a connection how I'm feeling this autumn and my father's soft quilt that I'm making stronger each day.

It nearly fell apart.                                                                                                                                        It nearly died.

But with each day, it is becoming more lovely.  The more love I pour in, the more it returns to me.  

November 24:  Everything seems different today.  I am starting a new piece inspired by my dad's quilt and the citrus colours that April dyed last sumer.  I've lined up fabrics on the studio wall and today I will iron them and cut enough to start.  A shadow quilt like this demands a dedicated design wall.

 

I watch the mist hover over the grey waves,the constatnly moving horizontal ripples.

November 25:  Mended all morning.  

December 2:  Sunshine and Shadow.

I'm so glad to have started.  I pinned some last night and also this morning.  Now I'm piecing nine-patches by hand.  I take groups of 3 squares off the wall and then sit in the big leather chair to sew them together.  We listen to music.  

I think I will do only these 2 things all day tomorrow.  One hour cut and pin.   One hour sew 9 patches.

Solid and firm.  When I hold up a double 9-patch square, I feel so re-assured.

December 4:  All day, I cut and hand-stitched the shadow squares.  Maybe I will remove some of the red ones, I'm not sure.

It makes me feel amazing, to watch it grow.

December 5:  I came early to my window to stitch becuase Ned has put the coloured light tree in my line of site and timed it to come back on at dawn for a few hours.  I like to look at it, a beacon in the still darkness.  I'm stitching the new sunshine/shadow quilt top - 9 patches.  I've put in too much red and am removing some.

It's crazy how the balance of colour shifts so much everytime I add a new one.  Red is very powerful - such an eye magnet.  Yellow too, which I will cut and pin up today I think.  I'm afraid of yellow and red.  They are so powerful.  But I want them in this piece.  Truthfully, they are the whole reason that I've been ironing, cutting, pinning.  

It's satisfying to stitch nine-patches and place them one by one on the velvet pillow on my footstool, and then add them to the wall.  When I'm in the middle of a project like this - I feel really safe.

I fill the birdfeeder of my self.

December 6:  An object is not an object; it is a witness to a relationship.  Cecilia Vicuna