35. Camryn's Quilt

Flowers and leaves are often represented in quilts by pieced block patterns or by appliqué patterns. Both methods usually involve using lots of templates and painstaking labor. Such quilts are often exquisitely beautiful, complex, precise -- with nothing left to chance.

Sigh. Those are not my quilts. I don't enjoy the process of appliqué, and I no longer enjoy repeating identical blocks. As for drawing a large paper pattern and then making templates from it in order to re-create the drawing in fabric: in my world, doing the drawing would be the fun part, and all the rest of it would feel like painting by number; I'd never be able to finish such a quilt.

Yet flowers and leaves inspire me in the same way they have inspired countless others! So I went back to the methods I'd used in "Why 2K?" (entry #32) and created "Camryn's Quilt." Just as no two leaves or flowers in nature are exactly alike, no two blocks of this quilt are identical; they can't be, because each block was created improvisationally. My rotary cutter was the drawing tool. I used no pins, no marking tools, no paper, no patterns, no templates -- with a great deal left to chance.

Before I cut, I thought. The thoughts were about the structures of natural things: how a tree and its branches were similar to a leaf and its veins, for example. How a leaf or a flower shows itself to us based on the contrast between it and its background. How some flowers are round and some have petals and some are quite irregular. How some leaves are fat and others long and skinny. How the order in which I sew pieces together determines whether or not I get the background and foreground in the correct relationship. How oddly-shaped assemblages of irregularly-pieced shapes can be connected and united into a whole. I thought a lot.

Then, I cut a curve. And cut another. And sewed two pieces together. If it looked right, I cut and added the next piece. When it didn't look right, I either ironed it until it did and then re-sewed where the pressed line told me to, or I cut it apart with my trusty rotary cutter and tried again. A pretty forgiving method, all in all--hardly any ripping out. Yet the quilt does represent a steep learning curve, with lots of trial and error to get the look I wanted. Over time I got better at predicting and controlling the shapes that would result from sewing curved bits of fabric together. The technique was simple enough, but the thinking part burned up plenty of calories, as I was to discover when I began teaching other people how to create their own versions.

Gradually I realized something as I watched students struggle to understand what I was talking about: I was really teaching a new way of thinking about making a quilt rather than a new sewing technique. I wasn't aware of other people talking or writing or teaching about this way of creating natural forms with rotary cutter and fabric, and it occurred to me that this might be a way in which I could contribute to contemporary quilt literature. I gave some thought to writing a book. And therein hangs another tale.