28. Houses

One morning in July 1996 we decided to move. Four months later all our belongings had been transferred into a newly-built house modeled after the only one we had actually stepped into during our search for a new home. The process was just as unexpected and unanticipated as it sounds. Soon after moving, I put up a flannel-covered design wall in my new studio and began this quilt about the houses that were important to our family.

I now had a wonderful place in which to work, and yet my mind was all over the map and my focus was diffused. Off-balance, I had lost my bearings; though full of ideas and the desire to tell the story of our family homes, I had no mental image of the piece. So I simply started making bits and pieces that related to the theme. Beginning in confusion is sometimes the only way I can jump-start the creative process. While it makes sense to have a plan and then go on to carry out the plan, it is actually more often true that my mind only begins to cooperate in the creative process AFTER I start working. In other words, first I begin. Then I'm gradually inspired by what I have begun.

In this case, I returned to techniques I had already been playing around with. A bit of improvisational piecing came first as I generated some tree branch imagery, using the chartreuse and burgundy that I was seeing in the blackberry and bramble bushes of late winter (New England isn't all gray in winter, but you have to know where to look). Free-motion bobbin embroidery was right for creating evergreen branches (with painted/stitched pine cones) to go along with the bare winter trees, because our new home is surrounded by pines. And the quilt couldn't reflect our New England roots without a stone wall or two, so I made several. Initially, I appliqued the stones but then ran out of patience. A computerized drawing program made it possible to print out a pattern of my stone wall on paper, and using transfer paint, I ironed the design onto fabric. Then I happened upon a fabric that had stones already pre-printed and added that to the mix. Finally, I photocopied my house photos onto transfer paper and ironed them onto fabric. Now I had lots of pieces for my quilt, but bringing all the disparate elements together turned out to be very difficult, reminding me again that designing doesn't really get easier over time. Although after all these years of experience I generally avoid making the worst choices, the really inspired good choices are always elusive, involving hours of staring at my design wall, having moved a couple of pieces of fabric into or out of place, no closer to resolution. Moving the pieces of this very small quilt every which way finally brought home the realization that while the number of pleasing combinations of fabrics and placement might be infinite, I only had to choose one of them and sew the darn thing together.

Thoughts about house and home (and packing and unpacking) burned up a lot of energy for many, many months--more than I ever could have anticipated, as I learned how to organize and live in our new spaces. Given the distractions of moving and its aftermath, the disparate elements that made up the current version of my quilting career were as difficult to meld together as the parts of this quilt. I was still selling my curriculum through mail-order, thinking about writing an article here and there but not getting around to it, giving an occasional "show and tell" talk to various women's groups, and teaching a beginning quilt class. I didn't have much in the way of commission work. I hadn't made a quilt I was really, really happy with since I had moved, and I knew that I couldn't summon my muse back by command. The quilts would come, but I would have to be patient.

All the while, I seriously considered my need to increase my contribution to our income, muse or no. My new space was the answer. Little by little, more and more students visited my studio, and returned week after week for classes. The numbers grew, and I added fabric and supplies to the studio, as a convenience for them and an additional source of income for me. The students became more and more accomplished, and I found myself problem-solving and trouble-shooting in different ways. I had begun something new. And I would be inspired; I'd find out where I was headed next.

27. Moon over the Mountain

Made in the mid-90s, "Moon over the Mountain" hinted at future explorations while making use of traditional patterns, revealing the "back-and-forth" thought process behind the quilts I was making: sometimes I wanted to be an artist doing my own thing and sometimes I simply wanted to enjoy making work that other people would like and want to own. I gradually learned, of course, as I sold (or didn't sell) pieces, that both paths are a very, very difficult way to make a living. Or, rather, to make money. The living part is actually very rewarding.

Traditional pieced block patterns have survived the test of time because they work; the ugliest stuff didn't get passed from generation to generation, and it mostly disappeared (though it is true that some of it bobs to the surface from time to time, and then sinks out of sight again.) Choosing "tried-and-true" old-time patterns for this piece allowed me to concentrate on exploring color and setting. Familiar structures served as a jumping-off point to which I added rectangular blocks featuring free-form curved strips pieced together in a more improvisational way (a technique first learned from Marilyn Stothers back in the 80s). I had worked improvisationally for some time, but now I began to incorporate free-form, no-template curves into the mix. When making less traditional choices there is a much greater risk of failure--who knows what will survive the years?--and I was straddling the fence in this piece: I wanted to sell the quilt, so it couldn't be too far "out there." But I wanted to enjoy making it, so it couldn't be just another thoughtless repetition, either.

This is the tightrope on which I balanced at the time. In order to have a viable career in quiltmaking, I concentrated on making and selling work. Wanting to sell work comes perilously close to wanting to please, and it's tough to make honest work of integrity that way. Some do. I couldn't--at least, not enough to be self-supporting. It was time to move on to new ways of earning, and the move was monumentally jump-started when Michael woke up one morning and suggested "new house, garage, more storage." For me, that meant "new studio." It also led to much diversion of creative energy, a bit of a quilting dry spell, and then a brand new chapter.

26. What Relief

The phrase "pales in comparison" was surely coined for "What Relief". This quilt hangs in the main stairwell of our house, and you must pass it to reach our guest bedroom or my studio. I can't even count the people who have been in my house numerous times before they ever notice the six-foot-square quilt hanging in front of their eyes. It has a similar impact in slides, photographs, and quilt shows, which must account for the fact that it has been rejected from multiple shows. When it does manage to secure a spot, it often serves only to highlight its more colorful brethren. And yet...and yet... it's a very comfortable quilt to live with, graceful and easy on the eyes, with both hand and machine stitches defining its curved quilting designs. It's one of my very favorites, but its virtues can't be captured in a photograph.

It sprang from a desire to make a quilt which would have the same "embossed" relief effect that I had seen in a magazine picture of a white plaster wall with raised white floral designs. This kind of effect has been achieved in many traditional quilts through the use of trapunto techniques, also called "stuffed work," often done entirely in white. But I couldn't see my way through to abandoning color entirely, so I strip-pieced pastel fabrics together to form a "canvas" on which I would do lots of hand quilting, machine embroidery with metallic threads, and bobbin embroidery with RibbonFloss.

At this stage of my career, one of my purposes in making any quilt was to do my best work and hope it would enhance my public reputation, so I would be able to secure additional teaching jobs. I don't know why I thought that making a quilt which disappeared in a crowd would do this for me, but there you are...when inspiration comes, you really can't fight it. I wanted to create subtlety, and I most certainly did.

I worked really hard to help this quilt succeed: it got into its first show based on a slide taken before it had been fully quilted, and the deadline came upon me before I had completed the stitching, which--since I'd never missed a deadline--caused me to stay up most of the night stitching away, only to be too tired to drive it to the dropoff point an hour away. Husband to the rescue again: he dropped it off while I slept (thank you, Michael). I like to think I manage my time better in my older, wiser years, though it can still be touch-and-go around Christmas time.

The interesting thing about "What Relief" is that it, too, has gotten not only older but "wiser," through an unforeseen influence of time alone. Pictured here are two detail shots of the quilt including the border fabric (which was also used for the thin wavy lines throughout the quilt). The photo on the right from 1996 shows the border fabric design before its fugitive dyes began to fade away, as shown in a photo taken today. The fabric was originally low contrast and pastel, but its blue and beige tones have nearly vanished, bringing pale yellows to the fore, so that the fabric now is creamy and very subtly patterned. I don't mind the reduction in contrast, although I liked it before, and so did the judges at Quilt America who awarded it a prize in 1996, its moment of public glory. Fading should not happen, at least when fabrics have been carefully protected from direct sunlight as they have been in this case, but mistakes are made in the manufacturing process from time to time, and I remember that I did purchase this particular decorator fabric from a remnant table at a very good price. So..."What Relief" not only pales in comparison--it just pales, period. Then again, I've developed wrinkles. Of the two forms of aging, I might prefer fading...

25. LocoMotif

Hubcabs 1 led to Hubcaps 2 which led to Windshield Wipers (more on that later) which meant that I had a series going; LocoMotif is the fourth quilt in that series inspired by machine imagery. While visiting the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, I had noticed a train engine in a nearby pocket park. Drawn to the sculpture of sinuous pipes, nuts, bolts, gears, and wheels, I wandered up close, took a photograph, and loved the resulting imagery so much I decided to translate it into fabric. And because there was a contest coming up featuring train and railroad themes, I decided to do it in one week, the end of which was scheduled to be a mini-getaway long weekend in New Hampshire for my husband and me. He gamely watched as I couldn't quite get it finished enough to photograph before leaving for vacation; he bravely suggested that I bring it with us to work on. I rolled up the full-size drawing and packed it along with fabrics, pins, needles, threads, and paints. I still can't believe I spent part of our vacation working on a quilt deadline, but in fact it was a most efficient way to work, because the only distractions were welcome ones: running on beautiful country roads, swimming on a lake, and eating out. Efficient, yes. Fun? It depends on who's answering the question. My husband's unflagging support qualifies him as a bona fide saint (that, by the way, doesn't make him any easier to live with, but I digress). I mailed the slides off only to be rejected because my entry didn't arrive in time (I had hoped it was a postmark deadline, but I was wrong). This is another of those experiences that taught me lessons: it's good to stay utterly focused, because you'll get a lot done in a short time; it's better not to do that while on vacation; and it's smart to pay attention to the fine print on the entry forms.

This quilt went on to gather additional rejections until it was discovered by someone who thought it belonged in our local museum as part of an exhibit called "Fuel for Thought." There, someone gave me a real gift by recognizing the engine depicted in the quilt. Then LocoMotif was discovered by my younger son. If you give one son a quilt for his 21st birthday, you must do the same for the second son, and the quilt is now his. However, come to think of it, it's still in my studio and it's still part of my traveling lecture/trunk show. Given that he's a married homeowner who just turned 30, it's probably time to let the quilt go home with its rightful owner. And it's time to come full circle and complete Number Five in the series, which has been accepted for a fall exhibit at--where else?--the New England Quilt Museum.

24. Neighbors

Throwing lots of fabrics up on a design wall to create new work is easy. Knowing what to take off the wall is really hard. Knowing when you are finished and ready to sew the piece together is harder still. These challenges are represented by "Neighbors," one of a category of quilts which in the mid-90s was something new for me, involving a more spontaneous design process. My quilts and wall-hangings up to this point usually had an idea, a concept, a plan--however "sketchy"--behind them. What I began to do now was much more improvisational.

This new approach was born of a need to work fast, which in turn had arisen from a decision to use high-end craft venues to move small works quickly. I needed a lot of work to send out to galleries and also to take with me to several large craft fairs which were an experimental part of my business plan. Small works were either wall-hangings like the one pictured here or pillow covers. Both initially represented a way of working which let me try out ideas and techniques on a small scale; they were like fabric sketches.

It wasn't until I had put up a few pieces of fabric (probably retrieved from a scrap basket or even more probably from scraps piled in a heap on the floor) that I began to think I was creating a city of sorts, a city of strange juxtapositions. I didn't try to understand why I liked these combinations (maybe some things are better left unexplored!); I just kept auditioning pieces of fabric to see what the piece would become, and at some point--the sky fabric came last, I think--it felt like enough.

In sewing it together, I had to plan ahead, because the order in which I sewed pieces could box me into corners or create nice, easy-to-sew straight lines. Though designing "Neighbors" was like creating a collage, I couldn't simply superimpose one piece of fabric over another if I were going to piece the work together without making a mess of it. This spurred thoughts about how construction techniques dictated some of the "look" of the piece and raised questions for future work: Would I limit what I represented in fabric to what could be neatly constructed, or would I design with abandon and then figure out how on earth to sew it into some form or other?

I'll answer that: yes. Yes, I would. Both. I'm still working it out.

Let me sum up: as usual, the results of working on a succession of pieces like "Neighbors" followed the laws of unintended consequences. I learned to work fast and with less plodding because I needed to sell more work: a good thing. I chose craft shows to try to do that: a not-so-good thing. I learned more about the limits and possibilities of my chosen medium and was pushed in new directions: good. Though the craft shows were not worth the effort from a business point of view, the "preview open-house sale with friends and students" the week before the show developed into a successful tradition for me for a number of years: good. From where I sit now: it's all good.

23. Fiesta Log Cabin

Though the title says "Fiesta," the quilt looks Asian-inspired to me...and it is, having been conceived as a solution to the problem of how to use 18 samples of Japanese yukata fabrics, each of which was a small and pricey rectangle sporting one ginormous (it's in the dictionary now, so I can use it) flower motif. I had bought the super-sized swatches because they were so unusual--almost garish, with a strong statement of their own to make. It was a challenge to get them to cooperate with other fabrics.

The setting features the flower fabrics as the centers of "courthouse steps" log cabin blocks, surrounded by strips of equally strong but less bold fabrics. These blocks alternate with large squares composed of four half-log cabin blocks joined together. The whole idea came from a sketch I did on a napkin at a restaurant where the pattern of the table surface had given me the idea. Though at first glance the blocks with the floral centers appear to be smaller than the adjoining blocks, they are actually the same size. This optical illusion was a surprise to me--and I love it when that happens. (Sometimes it would be nice to know exactly what the quilt I've designed in my head will look like, but I almost never do). The colors in the stripes reminded me of old-fashioned Fiestaware, which--together with the fact that the quilt had a lot of visual energy and I had a lot of fun making it--led to the title.

As part of my renewed enthusiasm to "make a go" of my quilting career, I had begun to put out a regular newsletter announcing the classes I'd be teaching and shows I'd be in. In one of the issues I announced that I would give away this quilt to the person/organization who could come up with the best proposal for using it to raise money for a good cause. It was an experiment in launching a quilt to do some good in the community without actually having to sell the tickets myself. I thought I might get a bit of publicity out of it, too (which, by the way, I did not--oh, well). Out of several proposals, I selected one which would benefit an alternative school for kids who'd gotten themselves into trouble. I spent a bit of time visiting at the school when I dropped the quilt off. The quilt had had its day in the sun at a few quilt shows; it was a quilt with lots of good energy in it, and I felt happy to look at it. And that was that.

People often ask me how I can bring myself to give my quilts away or sell them. Except when a bit of nostalgia hits and I feel a brief wave of desire to see a quilt again, I'm well-rewarded as I work through the creative process, and when the product is done--well...it's over. Of course I love it when someone is willing to buy a quilt from me, because then I can be reasonably certain that it won't immediately end up as a dog bed or a furniture moving pad. But once it's out of my sight...I'm already looking forward to the next quilt.

22. A.K. Remembered

Half way through creating this quilt in the early 90's, I ran out of the blue "sky" fabric and couldn't find any more anywhere. Attempting to create my own version of the blue flowered print, I took the plunge and for the first time tried fabric paints. The pieces are small enough and the quilt is busy enough that the old and new blues worked together just fine, and I acquired another set of skills that I have put to good use over time. But that isn't why this quilt's story is told here.

Most steps along the way are not giant leaps, and not every quilt is major. This one is a short story: a small quilt, a small tribute to someone who in a small way helped me along my path. Someone who happened to have the experience and wisdom to recognize where I was and who happened to do the exact thing I needed at just the right time.

"A.K." was the mother of a friend. She was also a quilter, one whom I saw regularly for a relatively short period of time whenever my friends and I met for our run at the house where she was living with her daughter's family. At a time when I was deeply mired in doubt about whether quilting would be a career or be relegated to hobby status, when outer and inner voices were pushing me to commit wholeheartedly to a focused working life, she commissioned me to make a birthday present for her daughter. It was to be in part a quilt of autumn in New England. I completed the commission, and I think she was pleased to be able to give my work to her daughter. It wasn't the quilt pictured here.

Not too long afterwards, she died. Some time later I found myself making yet another autumn quilt (it's clearly in my blood) and remembering this generous and wise woman, and I gave the quilt its name. She had made a relatively minor decision in choosing a birthday gift for her daughter. But her choice, added to other voices and other small gestures of support over time, helped me to believe that I wasn't put on earth to keep a spotless house nor to turn the world around or upside down. On my own I had finally figured out that I wasn't put here to teach in the public schools, either.

So I sat down and set about creating a real business plan. Having committed to my life's work, now I committed wholeheartedly to exploring all aspects of it--including the question of whether I could support myself. The business plan didn't last long in its original form, but the career has endured and the explorations have taken me in directions I never could have predicted. Meanwhile, the quilt has hung in art galleries and on dormitory walls, holding its own as a reminder to be grateful for fine people and small works.