“Arrange whatever pieces come your way:” Artist statement

Some quilts I think through in advance and meticulously design. Some quilts emerge in spite of my best efforts to plan/control/anticipate. This quilt is definitely the latter!

25ish” by 28ish” and deliberately wonky. I had to really challenge myself NOT to square it up and sacrifice the organic nature of how it evolved.

This art quilt was my project at the recent “Huddle” – a quilt retreat for members of Zak Foster’s Quilty Nook.  We were charged with each bringing a piece of new fabric, a garment or otherwise repurposed fabric, a fabric not typically used in quilting, and some sort of notions or baubles. Thirty of us pooled our offerings in a giant (and quickly very chaotic) heap on a pool table, and then were tasked to pick at least one item from each category and make… something.

The results were as diverse as the creative minds of the individuals gathered there, but what all of the resulting quilts had in common is that they revealed something about the maker – often something the maker themself was surprised by.

I admit that I identified with the words on the sock. :)

My quilt started out as a nostalgic exploration of quilting projects I have done and quilting projects that have inspired me. The leftover piece of a Christmas stocking is a nod to several years of producing stockings for loved ones, and the sock brought me back to a fun workshop I took with British quilter Russell Barrett. There was a brief spell where it appeared that I may have inadvertently chopped up a sock that my roommate was still using, but thankfully she tracked down her pair and we identified the source of the one I hacked up.

The most nostalgic part of this quilt is perhaps the brown quarter-inch gingham that I used for the backing, which I then wrapped around to form a binding on the front. Fifty years ago I took my first formal sewing instruction in the form of seventh grade Home Economics. The project we made was an apron – and my apron was made from this very same gingham.

I made a short-cut version of a tiny HST quilt that echoes a couple of past projects and did lots and lots of needle turned applique because I’m a little obsessed with it lately. One of the other Huddle participants gave us each a tiny quilt with one of the seashells she collects. I added it in celebration of the creative community that gave rise to this quilt.

If you have followed me for a while, you may be familiar with the wandering “bee trails” of stitching I often incorporate into my quilts. I took these wandering lines to a new level with some packets of strung seed beads. I may have unlocked a new obsession.

A donated single block of Hawaiian appliqué reminded of a quilt I was inspired by at a recent quilt show. As my quilt evolved, I followed a suggestion from Zak to echo some of the shapes in white – yet more appliqué!

I reached a point about halfway through making this quilt where I got stuck. I had a huge blank section where I had experimented with a number of features, none of which made me happy. I went to bed frustrated but reflecting on a conversation that had reminded me of the importance that Virginia Woolf’s writing had had for my self-discovery. On a whim, I Googled “Virgina Woolf quotes” and stumbled on the words that became the title of this quilt: “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” While Woolf wrote these words about her writing practice, it summed up for me something that I wanted to express about my quilting. I am building an art practice in a way that is largely self- directed – hunting for the teachers I need when I need them, rather than having attended any sort of formal fine arts education.

Which brings me to the blank space. Technically, it is a place to rest the eye in the midst of a quilt that has, as one person said to me, “a LOT going on.” But it is much more than that. It began as a nod to a similar blank space on one of Zak Foster’s quilts. The meaning of that space on Zak’s quilt is Zak’s story to tell. For me it represents any number of gaps and missed opportunities that I look back on with varying degrees of regret. But a funny thing happened as I continued to sew. If you look closely, you’ll see that other features began to encroach on my “blank space.”

I’m still thinking about what that means.

I will be sharing more about my time at the Huddle in my Newsletter, coming out May 31st. Subscribe below to get on the mailing list!.