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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Whole Cloth

I finished this hand-appliqued quilt top a couple of days ago and now will put it away until my quilting teacher appears. Twice I have signed up for classes and both times the classes were canceled due to insufficient enrollment. I'm certain that when I'm ready the teacher will appear. How Buddhist is that?
These gorgeous fall days and anticipation of my upcoming trip to California have ramped up my productivity in all areas. I love it. With day time temps in the 70's, chilling to the mid-40's overnight, I am filled with energy. God willing, I may even clean the garage and the car. In my chauvinistic, atavistic thinking, I keep waiting for the man of the house to do those chores. However, like the quilting teacher, he has yet to appear.
Quilting has made me realize how much I love textiles as a mode of expression. I have dabbled with them in the past, making clothing, soft sculptures, painting garments, etc., but never with any continuity. As I look back over my life, I can think of two things I wish I had done more of: exploring the Sierras, and exploring textile art forms. It's too late to go cross-country skiing and backpacking, but at least I can still do some work with textiles. Somehow I missed the clues that presented themselves earlier in my life. I have always been fascinated with Christo and his use of fabric combined with landscape and architecture, and I remember the rapturous feeling of exploring the Cluny museum in Paris, opening drawers to exhibits of fabrics centuries and even thousands of years old. These fabrics are displayed in wooden cabinets like map drawers, under glass, and you can just pull the drawer open and see remnants of ancient fabrics. I love the connection to the mind of a human being from the dim past through something expressed by their hands.

1 comment:

  1. What a beautiful quilt! Maybe it will be more along the lines "If you build it, they will come" with the quilting teacher. Now that you've quilted it, they (the teacher and the other necessary students) will come!

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