20. November Unfolded

A flowered fabric in unusual colors and a take-out food box led to "November Unfolded." The pattern idea was simple enough; I had already done two small wall-hangings using an unfolded box as template and felt I could do more--I wanted to integrate the curved "tab" of the box into the design.

The color was another story; I was drawn to a very light floral fabric with an unusual palette: creamy white background with yellow, rust, green, and black flowers. (This fabric is used in the patches which represent the base of the unfolded box.) I struggled with the colors in this quilt; I was fairly certain the fabrics I saw on my design wall wouldn't be on anyone's list of favorites any time soon, but I was compelled by them. A couple of weeks into the process I realized that these are the colors that show up on a rainy November day along a New England roadside: the rusts and dark wine colors of the oak leaves that hang on after the brighter leaves have long since fallen... the bittersweet, with its bright orange berries and hint of golden yellow husks... the pines whose needles have gotten a bit more yellow-green as the year has aged... the bright red-orange winterberry... the black of wet tree trunks after a downpour... and the ever-pervasive gray of the sky just before winter sets in. Not the best-loved landscape of our region, but home nonetheless.

By this time I had come to understand that any quilt worth my time and effort would have to please me. But when you send work out into the "quilt show" world for the express purpose of its being seen, you really hope a few other people will love it, too. And I had a bad feeling about that. My feeling was confirmed at a "show and tell" event with two local quilt guilds. A ripple went through the crowd when I showed the quilt, but it was because I tripped as I went up the stairs to hold it up for display. The actual showing yielded the dreaded "hmm...interesting" reaction.

I had wanted a jury to like it enough to select it for a show whose deadline was coming up in January. It was not to be. Though I completed the quilt in record time (two days early!), it was not accepted into the AQS show. Here was a moment against which I had been steeling myself, but even so I was not prepared for the strength of my anger and hurt when I got the rejection letter that set off a series of internal struggles which of course had been there all along just waiting to be faced. Again I looked for answers about the value of putting so much time and effort into making quilts, and again I found myself in utter confusion about how to best get my favorite work "out there", and blah blah blah. In the heat of the moment it was difficult to sort out the issues, and I didn't have the time. I now found myself in a public school classroom two or three days a week, with other days and evenings taken up with quilt classes or my part-time job for the Conservation Commission. And that didn't count the huge energy cost inherent in not doing things, especially when you factor in the internal agitation resulting from the things not getting done but constantly shoved to the bottom of endless lists. If I were to do a word count in my journal entries for that year, the highest number would go to the word "tired." Resilience and sense of humor are early victims of fatigue, and yet they are the most sorely-needed traits while contemplating life decisions. Something had to give, and this 93-94 school year would help me to decide what was worth pursuing and what had to go.

Twenty years had passed between my first quilt and November Unfolded. Back then, I was already an "old hand". But fourteen more have passed since then, and I've learned I was really just beginning the journey. I'm still not happy my quilt was rejected. I am still happy I made the quilt I loved. I did find those "few people" who also loved this quilt: one wrote about it in an article called "Strange and Wonderful" and another invited me to include it in a show called "New England Seen" at the New England Quilt Museum. And that's enough for now.

19. Nocturne

Circles have kept coming round in my quilts. Sailboats, also. Nocturne is an example of both, in a quilt begun shortly after I had worked long and hard on a very large, very pink and white traditional quilt. I longed to work with bright colors again. A magazine ad featuring a sailboat weathervane provided inspiration; it featured a background divided into sunny sky on one side and rainy sky on the other. I placed my version of the boat in a circle, half day and half night. The patchwork forming the border is a variation of the traditional "Ocean Waves" block, quilted with a "clamshell" pattern. The night/day interior is quilted with wave-like shapes in metallic threads. I tried out a number of techniques and materials and ideas with results that satisfied me, and yet somehow--though I enjoyed making it--I didn't feel emotionally connected to the piece. I'm no sailor. I find I can describe the quilt perfectly accurately from my memories, but I don't remember why I wanted to make it, and so I think of it as a "study". It's definitely too small to function as a quilt, and viewing it as decorative art raised the question of how I felt about making quilts that weren't...quilts. To this day, I continue to explore that particular issue and have come up with a very large number of (sometimes circular) thoughts about--not to mention attempts to resolve--that stubbornly abiding question.

It wasn't until much later--when the piece appeared in a magazine--that I discovered that the pieced border in the top right side of the quilt has a red/blue half-square triangle unit that somehow got rotated a quarter turn while I was sewing the block; it's just plain wrong. This was another in a long line of mistakes which help to give my quilts their unique voice, and really the one thing which finally linked me to the quilt and gave it some "personality." This particular work made me happiest when I found someone who really did connect with it, enough to purchase it.

Themes come round again in life, also. As I've mentioned, my first son was off to college, with the second not that far from following him out of the nest, and I was once again faced with the question of where I wanted to put my energy--not to mention the responsibility of sharing those giant tuition bills. Keeping home running smoothly could always eat up time, but I was devilishly clever at finding ways to do the "homemaking" I wanted to do and avoid the parts I didn't like, and it had become clear to me--and to my husband--that I always would. I knew I had a passion for quilting. But did I want to keep it as a hobby, untainted by the need to please anyone but myself--or did I want to throw myself into it full force and make it a career? It was time to make some difficult choices. And then, against all reason and just as my quilting voice was beginning to be heard in a larger world than my own town, I decided to give teaching in public schools one more try. I signed up to substitute teach in a local school system, to see what it would be like. Thus began a year of soul-searching and, finally, a commitment to my work.

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".

17. The Bobby Quilt

"Bobby" was one of the first commissions I worked on in the "post-Lynne" era of QuiltEssential. It remains the most painful experience of 30-plus years of making quilts. The quilt was the third one commissioned by this particular client, for whom Lynne and I had previously made two quilts which had been warmly received. This grandmother wanted another quilt for her newest grandson, and she wanted cars and trucks, in primary "boy" colors as opposed to baby pastels. I set about designing four different car/truck blocks, drew up a proposed quilt design on graph paper, pretty much exactly as it is in this picture, and got the "go-ahead." I chose a blue/green plaid for the borders--very "masculine", I thought--and a blue print for the sashing and for the name that was to be sewn along the bottom of the quilt. I chose lots of stripes, plaids, and bold graphic fabrics for the cars and trucks. I was satisfied with the results as I delivered the quilt to the house just before Christmas; the client wasn't there, but her daughter accepted the package.

Shortly after Christmas, I received in the mail a letter from my client. In no uncertain terms, she rejected the quilt I had made, telling me that the quilt was far too ugly (her words) for her to even consider giving it to her grandson. She asked that I pick it up and take it away. It wasn't at all what she wanted, and she made no attempt to spare my feelings in saying so; quite the contrary, in fact--she made sure I understood just how upset she was that her planned Christmas present was such a disaster.

I shed bucketloads of tears at the kitchen table where I finished reading the letter. Devastated, I wrote a quick note asking when I could pick up the quilt, enclosed her refund, and cried some more. After the tears came anger, when I considered the way she had handled the matter. Then, gradually, I worked on the "forgiveness" part of the experience--that is, after I had sounded forth rather vehemently on the subject with my running buddies; oh, the things they have heard over the years....

The perspective granted by the passing of time now lets me understand what I gained in the process. After the humiliation came a firm resolve to listen more carefully, to make sure I truly understood what the customer was asking for, and to make sure we were on the same page about color vocabularies by the end of our contract process. Commissions are not about me and my preferences. All of my clients since that time have benefited from that lesson, and in the kind of work that I currently do, it is especially important that I get it "right," although that is a subject for future blog entries.

Happy ending: I removed the "Bobby" sewn along the bottom border and sold the quilt to someone who was able to see the quilt with a kinder, gentler vision. And my confidence was tempered and strengthened by a dose of humility and a feeling of gratitude that we don't all see the world through the same eyes.

16. Spring Thaw

After making "Ambivalence," Lynne and I returned to themes of nature. We set out to make a companion piece to "Forget Me Not," featuring a pieced background, a "window" area containing floral motifs, and suggestions of a landscape. One thing we knew at the outset: there would be no curves this time. Leafing through the many "idea" scrapbooks that we kept to inspire us, we happened upon a magazine ad featuring a narrow, vertical shaft of light on a dark background. Thematically it had nothing to do with what we wanted to work on, but it was a compositional starting point. We began with the "landscape" background, working from the top down, beginning with small rectangles and gradually increasing the size to give some abstract sense of perspective. Also in the scrapbook was a color image, torn from a magazine, which depicted an alpine setting with colorful flowers in the foreground. I have a dim recollection that our subject matter and color palette were influenced by that clipping. So much for the background.

Then the question became: what exactly do we add to give this quilt its reason for existing. After all, it wasn't imagined as a bed quilt with an obvious utilitarian purpose; we wanted it to have a focal point. We experimented with a number of ways to fill our "window" area, and abstract flower blocks were our answer. We then composed a vertical panel of pieced strips and set them at a diagonal angle to provide additional contrast between them and the background. Somewhere along the line we began to perceive the design as that which our title suggests: a spring thaw, an icy-cold mountain gradually giving way in color and geometry to a river and a springtime burst of flowers and greenery. Choice of design for the quilt stitching then became clear: snowflake-like shapes quilted with silver thread within the vertical shaft, "landscape" contour lines in mountains, river, and field areas, and flower-like shapes dotting the "grassy" part of the landscape.

The finished quilt hung at a number of venues, the most memorable for me being the Vermont Quilt Festival. The previous year at the same show, Lynne and I had celebrated winning awards by enthusiastically enjoying the champagne reception; the year "Spring Thaw" hung, we commiserated over the fact that it hadn't won a ribbon by energetically partaking of the champagne reception.

Our last joint art quilt effort, "Spring Thaw" is intertwined with beginnings and endings, with life's ups and downs and unpredictable paths. By this time, Lynne and I had done a lot of teaching together. There were many innovative attempts at "promotion" and marketing, many grant proposals and letters and articles written, many ribbons won, many shows mounted. We had drunk many a cup of coffee as we pondered the problems posed by living the "artist's life." We had shared many a chuckle as our dogs raced after each other. Our work had been featured in art galleries and fine craft venues and even a Japanese magazine. We had taken an art class together at RISD in the continuing ed department. We had worked craft fairs together, and eyed each other sympathetically and silently as we heard the inevitable comments of potential customers who wanted to do just what we were doing--if only they had the time. And how much time DID it take, anyway? Hearing the answers, the customers would often completely support our charging a fair price, all the while signaling that they themselves would not be spending that sum on work they could imagine themselves doing--if only they had the time.

But over time, we found ourselves in an era when imported quilts had begun to overwhelm the market, appearing for impossibly low prices in department stores. Though we were offering custom design, our prices for traditional quilts were now being compared to prices of quilts made in countries where wages and materials costs were far lower than in ours. And though we were still selling art quilts, made by one or the other of us, they were often the smaller pieces at smaller prices.

During those same years, our children were growing up. My first son was preparing to go to college, and there were financial pressures and life issues to address--including issues I thought I had already figured out but had really just placed on hold for a time. I was working with our local conservation commission on a part-time basis as well as doing QuiltEssential commissions and teaching. And most often, it was a commission or teaching, not making art. One particular job proved to be the last straw, at least for Lynne: two identical, traditional, queen-sized quilts forced her to ask herself if she really wanted to be spending her artistic energies in exactly that way. Our goals began to diverge as we fell under different kinds of pressures and expectations, and with the writing of one final check, QuiltEssential was in my keeping.

Lynne and her husband own "Forget Me Not." "Ambivalence" lives in my house and is often featured in the lectures I give. We donated "Spring Thaw" to the local art museum for its annual fundraising auction, where it raised a worthy and gratifying sum.

Our quilting connection endures; I still look to her for the occasional critique when I get stuck or want a trustworthy reaction to some new effort. She drinks less coffee these days than I do, but we, along with another old friend from the early days, regularly meet over mugs of something hot. And QuiltEssential goes on.

15. Leave of My Senses

Mistakes? This quilt had them in spades. Lessons? Oh, yes. And opportunities, too: my forays into a quilting career were confirmed and furthered. I didn't give the quilt its name: my husband came up with the idea when he saw me feverishly trying to finish the top for an entry deadline: "Leave of My Senses," he called it.

Planning for this piece began while I was lying awake one night. Moonlight, filtered through holly bushes just outside the window, streamed into our bedroom and cast crescent-shaped shadows onto the wall. I thought the shadows in shades of gray were interesting all by themselves, even without any color. I had already wanted to work with curved leaf shapes and had (with Lynne) done a very simple version in "Forget Me Not." Happening upon a book covered by marbleized paper, I studied closely how the positive and negative shapes and values flowed into each other. Inspirations and observations merged, yielding a 12-piece curved block unit. Sixty-six of these blocks created the quilt top. Though every block was made from identical templates, the placement of lights and darks varied, and half the blocks were mirror-imaged. No two blocks were the same in fabric choices; I used some maroon and green prints and a wide variety of grays and blacks. It was a nightmare to keep track of--its title was most descriptive.

Now, about those mistakes. As usual, I worked feverishly to meet the deadline. Although life really was pretty darn busy back then, I have to admit I probably focus best when I'm under time pressure. But my work can be compromised technically as the clock ticks mercilessly along, and that happened this time. I got the slides mailed off all right, was accepted into the show, and even won a first place ribbon. Yet when I saw the quilt hanging, I overheard one woman say to another, "Hmm....it really doesn't hang that well, does it?" I wish I could say that she was just envious that I had a ribbon. In fact, she--and this bugged me no end--was right. I know that I don't make perfect quilts; I don't have the patience or the skill for it, and only occasionally do I even have the desire. Still, her comment gnawed at me.

Finally realizing that the technical imperfection which kept the quilt from hanging "just right" kept people from focusing on the design and the details I wanted them to see, I took drastic measures. When the quilt was accepted into the American Quilter's Society Show in Paducah, KY, I took time to remove the sawtooth edging, time to take out all of the elaborate quilting in the two side borders, time to remove the borders completely. I was determined to find out why it would not hang straight, and I did. The length of the quilt varied by 1-2 inches depending upon whether I measured through the vertical center, or the sides. The sides were just a bit longer, causing the ripple in the center. I shortened the side borders, put everything back together again, and shipped it down to Paducah.

One afternoon during the multiple-day show, I received a phone call from one of the show officials and was overwhelmed to hear that "Leave of My Senses" had won the first place in the Innovative Design competition of this nationally prestigious show. To me it felt like winning an Oscar, and in addition to validation, a fancy ribbon, and a Waterford crystal award, it included a money prize which enabled me to buy a fancy new sewing machine to replace the very basic model I had received as a high school graduation present. I would be interviewed and published in the book containing the winners. I gained both confidence and credentials for furthering my career goals: in the next months and years I would have to decide exactly what form those goals would take.

In this instance, all that I went through to fix my mistake was justified by the award. I learned important lessons. It is definitely more efficient not to rush things if it means undoing them later. Though I fixed the mistake that was interfering with my communicating with the viewer, I didn't feel compelled to fix other mistakes: for example, one set of "prairie point" inserts in one of the curved seams is inserted upside down. No one but me has ever noticed unless I pointed it out. It would have been a waste of time to fix that. And as for avoiding making such mistakes (excepting the ones caused by sheer haste): not gonna happen. I've been doing this a lot of years, and even my current work sometimes yields examples of quite unintentional glitches discovered after a quilt has been shown, published, even purchased; there are probably more that I haven't even discovered. I'm hoping they will serve as (unintentional) rewards for some future diligent observer.

Long after this quilt had traveled to many other places and won additional ribbons, it was a source of one of my greatest rewards. In 1994 there was an annular (solar) eclipse in our area, in mid-day. I had just finished a run with several friends when they called to me; just about the time when the eclipse had reached its peak, one of them had noticed the sunlight casting crescent-shaped shadows through the leaves of a large tree and suddenly realized she was looking at a pattern that very much reminded her of "Leave of My Senses." When I returned home from my run, there was a message from my husband who, coming in from his lunch hour run, had seen those same shadows through another tree (the crescent-shaped shadows are a feature of this type of eclipse) and had for the first time understood the inspiration behind this quilt. To have created something that had caught a glimpse of nature's design--even though I didn't fully understand it--was the greatest thrill. To communicate some truth--however small--through the work of one's hands and spirit: well, there is no greater motivation for me. Nor is there a goal more difficult and elusive and rare. Clever, "interesting," beautiful, different, new: any of these is easier than "true". The pursuit of authenticity and the very occasional but joyous and even surprised "yes!" that rises when I see what I've made are all that is necessary to explain why I must continue making quilts.

14. Running Stitches

"Ambivalence" returned. Or rather, some elements of that quilt reappeared: its plaid geometric shapes became scaled-down "houses" lining an imagined New England roadside in a quilt made of my racing t-shirts. It was inevitable, I guess, that my running and quilting interests would merge when my shirts began escaping from the drawers they were stuffed into.

It isn't easy composing a quilt with such a wide variety of large and bold graphic designs. The obvious choice, and the simplest, would have been to cut out all the logos in same-sized square shapes and sew them together in a grid, which--given the number of shirts I had--could have sheltered my whole extended family. I began to experiment by putting up pieces on my flannel-covered design wall, but the result looked more like a jumbled billboard than the quilted "running journal" I had hoped for, so it was back to the drawing board.

Gradually I realized that what I wanted to convey was my enjoyment of running, and--daughter of New England that I am--that meant my enjoyment of running on country roads through four seasons, with the companionship of good friends. Knowing what it is you want to say makes all the difference: once I understood why I was making the quilt, I was able to separate the shirts into winter, spring, summer, and fall colors; I cut out a fabric road for the center squares. Piecing fabrics together in an improvisational way, I tried to suggest houses and trees along the road, rather than to depict them realistically. My friends--with whom I have roamed the roads, solved many a problem, shared laughs and tears--are represented in photographs transferred to fabric. These days, it's simple to print a digital image directly onto fabric, but back in the early 90s when I made this quilt, the only option available for getting pictures onto fabric meant buying reverse-image color photocopies of my pictures, coating the copies with a white glue-like liquid, and letting them dry. Little by little, I used water and elbow grease to rub away the paper; what remained was a color image imprinted on a plastic-like medium which I then glued onto fabric. It was a tedious process, but it put my friends in the quilt.

The results were positive: I ended up with extra room in my drawers for new race shirts, great dust cloths from the shirt remnants (to this day, t-shirt rags take the place of paper towels in our house), and a quilt which led to my first magazine article. Back then, external rewards seemed to come easily and regularly as a result of exposure in various regional and national quilt shows; it seems to me now that I never even worried about whether I would get into a show, and I never had to look far for the next opportunity to present itself. And sure enough, this quilt brought a new chance my way. One afternoon I received a phone call from one of the editors of American Quilter Magazine. She asked if I were sitting down and went on to tell me that she and her co-editor wanted to put my running quilt on the cover of their magazine. As it turned out, the editors were overridden by a higher-up who wanted something more acceptable to a larger number of readers. Instead, they asked me write an article about the quilt so they could feature it within the pages of the magazine. This was my first shot at writing, and I hadn't even had to send a query letter. In hindsight, I marvel that I somehow avoided agonizing self-doubt and simply took advantage of the opportunities that came along. Those lucky first experiences have made it easier for me to recover from the sometimes appropriate yet always disheartening rejections from shows and magazines that I have experienced since. Little successes and little failures make for a balanced life in the long run.