18. Grandmother's Rows Garden

The way I figured it, "Grandmother's Rows Garden" was bound to be a failure. "Leave of My Senses" had succeeded beyond expectations, leaving me intimidated and challenged in the process, not really knowing what to do next. But by now I'd gotten into the habit of entering several large shows each year, partly to spur me on to complete at least a few of the many ideas that were usually swirling in my head, and also to reward myself for doing the more routine work of commissions. Though I fully expected to fail to live up to myself, I designed and submitted this quilt to Quilter's Gathering in 1993. I had it in my possession as a completed quilt all of about 30 minutes before I mailed it off to the show. I have never seen it since. The magazine pictured above owned it after awarding me the purchase prize for "Most Innovative Use of a Traditional Pattern."

I don't even know where the quilt is now, although that isn't so different from the fate of many of the quilts I've made. What I do know is how it felt to go through the design process, because I wrote about it in my journal (oh, how I wish I had done more of that!). I started working on August 15, with a two week time-frame to go from nothing at all to a finished slide of a mostly-finished piece to enter into the show. I began with the desire to use a large hexagon shape and spent the first afternoon staring at my empty white design wall, cutting, placing, rearranging, and removing pieces of fabric. Nothing felt right. Nothing came together. At the end of the first day, I still had a blank wall--and now a bad mood, as well. Though I walked away, my thoughts continued to wander back to the workroom as I tried to figure out how to get the look I was after: vertical columns alternating between "vase" shapes and "flower" shapes reminiscent of calla lilies, with the hexagon shapes vanishing as color flowed from one block to the next. But it just wasn't happening. Two days later I had to ask myself why I was basing the quilt on hexagons if I didn't want them to show up? I decided to explore the possibility of leaving space between each hexagon, with some kind of fabric strip in between, so that these geometric shapes would contrast with the curving vertical lines. Then the problem became how I would actually sew everything together. I stayed up much too late working on a new technique for topstitching the quilt together with machine embroidery stitches. It would have been simpler to use an iron-on fusible web product to accomplish the design effect, but I had strong opinions against having a bed-size quilt that was cardboard-stiff instead of soft.

The next day I was back to making pillow shams and notebook covers (small commissions), but since I was in the "impulsive, impatient" stages and likely to get carried away by my ideas (see "Ambivalence" in a previous blog entry) it wasn't a bad thing to step away from the quilt for a day or two, so I could really see it again.

By the end of August, I was delighted that I had produced a major piece in a tight time frame (except for completing the hand quilting), and noted in my journal that I was happy with the way it had turned out: "not a blockbuster piece," I wrote, "but a good size, and it offered several technical challenges which I feel I handled well." In retrospect, one of the most important benefits of making this quilt was the addition of new technical abilities to my "tool box." The prize money didn't hurt, either. But the largest consequence of all was that, in creating this piece while contemplating former success, I realized--and noted in my journal--that "every quilt I make has to have my voice in it, and it has to be honest work. If those conditions are met, if I avoid falling into the trap of doing the latest fad technique...I can be satisfied with both the process and the product." That understanding saved me when I eventually did experience the very rejection that I had expected when I made "Grandmother's Rows Garden".