How do you process bad news, sad happenings, emotional events? Do you curl up in a ball with a warm beverage and shut off the world? Do you rage clean? (I never knew that was a thing until a friend talked about it). Do you avoid everyone and become cloistered in your home? The world has been overwhelming for such a long time now, it seems every day there’s another thing to stress about.
As I watched world events unfolding and getting scary really not too far from where I live, my heart got so heavy and sad. And angry. That too. I had to shut it off, I had reached my limit, time to go be in my creative space.
My tendency with projects as I get older is to stick to smaller scale ideas. I’ve made enough large quilts and blankets, and truthfully my focus is not what it used to be. I’m easily distracted and on to the next thing without finishing the current brainstorm. One of my favorite things to do is challenge myself to using just what is on my cutting table without getting out more supplies, I feel like it forces my creativity to be limited to only certain fabrics and art supplies.
This particular day I had a basic idea of what I wanted to make, I had seen a large quilt made with the Dresden plate style, where the “rays” of the plate were houses with wonky rooflines and funky shapes. I had a bundle of brown and gray plaid fat quarters on my table for starters. I worked without a pattern, ironing on fusible webbing and cutting wedge shaped houses while my pandora played on the Bluetooth speaker. I was able to lose myself in my thoughts, but I kept coming back to the awful and unjust things that were playing out in the nation.
I had my houses cut and ready to fuse but I needed something to be the circle in the center, and also the roofs. There wasn’t anything on my table that would work so I did break the rules and pull out a bin of scraps. Auditions happened and there were quite a few rejections until I found a piece that “might” work. I cut a circle and placed it in the center of the background with the buildings around it. I stood back and took a long look. It was the world. The center piece looked like a globe of the earth. It was the world.
All of a sudden I knew where I was going with the piece. I added wonky house tops and a couple chimneys, some windows, and some doors. I thought about all the people in those homes and how some were being uprooted and unfairly removed in chaos and terror. I worked with more purpose, quilting around all the appliquéd pieces, still deep in thought. I pulled scraps to add to the corners, working from the same bin until it was squared up and ready to have the binding sewn on.
I finished the piece the same night I started it, it basically built itself. It’s not large, probably about 14” square. The colors of fabric in the corners I realized were land, sea, and green foliage. I looked at the quilt, and I thought about how the world is one big place and we’re not so different from each other. I pulled out my bin of embroidery floss and free hand stitched what was in my brain, not stopping to draw out or space the words, how ever they fell they would have to fit. I used different colors, working intently. The letters were scrunched together in some places, not so tight in others, kind of like people in their homes and communities. But there was room. There was room for it all.