and this quilt it is so safe

Kindness is our only hope.

We were with our family in a Mexican resort during that unreal time between Christmas and New Year's.  We had a very beautiful escape.  

I took my handwork with me and there were moments of quiet when I turned to it, mostly in the early evenings in our very clean and white room when it was a relief to be away from the sun.

I am pleased to finally be able to share on this blog that I have been invited to mount a solo show at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England this coming August.  For the exhibition, I plan to finish up the quilt tops I put together during the pandemic so that I can display mostly all new work.  And this is one of them.

Quilting it surprised me.  When I hand piece a quilt, I usually need to strengthen the seams by quilting them 'in the ditch' and that is the case here.  However, this is the first time that I have added a secondary grid and that simple stitching made the old damasks express a softness that I had not expected.  

It became a quiet safety net full of PEACE.

A traditional one patch quilt has a timeless quality, not innovative or risky.  Quilts like this make me think about my 50 year marriage to Ned.  We celebrated it in Mexico with our children and there were many speeches and teasing about our long marriage and one of the kids asked me what my favourite thing about being married to Ned over the years and my answer  was that I felt safe with him.  

I'm a timid person. It's a scary world and I am afraid of it.  

And this quilt.  It is so safe.  

and my love is poured.

Our world goes to pieces. We have to rebuild our world.  We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance, not through a defined deficiency. We have to find our strength rather than our weakness.  Out of the chaos of collapse we can save the lasting: we still have our right or wrong; the absolute of our inner voice.  We still know beauty.  We still know freedom and happiness, unexplained and unquestioned.  Intuition saves us examination.  We have to gather our constructive energies and concentrate on the little we know, the few remaining constants.  But how?  We neglect a training in experimenting and doing.  We feel safer as spectators.  We collect rather than construct.  We are proud of knowledge but forget that facts only give reflected light.  If we want to learn to do, we have to turn to artwork, more specifically to craft work.  We learn that no picture exists before it is done.  The conception of a work gives only its temper, not its consistency.  Things take shape in material and in the process of working it.  Anni Albers