Doll Quilt Swap - Take Two

So, I've been very troubled by the quilt I made for the Doll Quilt Swap.

Making something for someone whom I've never met or spoken to with a guideline of sketchy likes and emphatic dislikes; I crumbled under the pressure and ended by making something I would never ordinarily produce. As if that wasn't bad enough, the more I looked at it, the more I disliked it.

By Friday, I hated it. (ETA: I hated it so much that I've deleted my blog post about it! :D )

My saving grace though, was that during the week I'd had a couple of conversations with my friend Crystal at Sonnet of the Moon ; early on - about the problems I was having making a quilt for my partner because our likes and dislikes were so disparate, and then another one on Thursday with respect to painting - about how an artist (or trying to be artist)'s vision shouldn't be constrained by the "wants" of an intended or posited recipient.

With these conversations in mind along with my now bubbling hatred of my initial doll quilt, I went to sleep on Friday night, and had a dream. In it, I made a small art quilt, inspired by the quilts of Naomi Wanjiku and this picture I took of coneflowers near our home about a month ago.



On Saturday morning I woke up early, and by 8:05 a.m. I was in my sewing room, re-creating what I had made the night before, in my dream. I knew exactly what fabrics I was going to use, so I tidied up, clearing away the project in the works, and then began pulling fabrics from both my stash, and my scrap bins - greens and bits of burgundy silk from ruined (but salvaged) silk placemats, some bits of leftover saffron cotton from the cat quilt I'd made last week, a ball of yarn and eight different threads.



I gathered these materials together, first cutting a base fabric (the batik next to the green strips) and a sheet of fusible web the same size as the base, which I laid on top of it. And then I began cutting and tearing the greens strips into strings such as Naomi might like to use. I laid those strings out onto the base fabric and, by 12:00 p.m. or so, this is what I had:



When I was done ironing down my fabric strings and filling in the empty spaces with more strings, I found a pale green backing and quilted those representational grasses and stems with green threads ranging from bright emerald to dusky loden and a pretty, silvery, variegated green metallic (because I always have to add a little shine.) :)

Then it was time for the coneflowers.

I took the bits of silk from the salvaged placemat and the other bits of burgundy from my scrap stash and added a yellow strip, from which I made 3 dimensional petals. For the centres of the coneflowers, I took the ball of yarn, clipped a string of it into a little pile and rolled the clippings into a ball with ordinary white glue. Then I set the balls aside to dry while I was making the petals, and when they were done, attached everything to my stems with clear filament thread.

Sadly, when they were finished - I had what looked like disembodied clown feet! (If you want a laugh, click to see the feet in all their large, technicolour glory!)



I took a late break (around 4:00 p.m.), had somethng to eat, pouted, and decided to take an extended break while I let things percolate. Back to my sewing room, I worked on making more of the 500 blocks for my orange quilt, and while doing so, BSP came in and asked how it was going. In despair, I said "Look at the clown feet!!!", to which BSP laughed, agreed they did look like clown feet and then said, "I thought you were going to do them one dimensional - y'know - flat"

FLAT!!!!

I immediately cleared away my orange project, removed the clown shoes, trimmed them back and laid them out in a pleasing pattern on the stems. Eureka! When they were done, they looked a little too flat, so I added some raspberry silk for extra dimension.



But the quilt needed something more. I went back to the inspiration picture and saw what I was missing - leaves! So I made leaves using the same method as the stems and quilted them in the same shades of green.



Fifteen hours later, the end result was a pretty little quilt (14 x 18") that I'm proud to send off to my swap recipient. It was a big lesson learned. The constraints of attempting to meet the desires of an intended recipient were so demanding that I lost sight of whatever talent and vision I may have of my own.

Although I do hope the recipient likes this little quilt; with no disrespect to her intended, that's simply not very important. From now on, I will make quilts that I think are beautiful; quilts that I'm proud to put my name on, and send them out into the Universe without wonder or worry about whether anyone else will approve of them. (This of course, means it's unlikely I'll be allowed to participate in a doll quilt swap again [!], though I'll be forever grateful for the lesson learned.)

So here is my "kleine quiltje" (as my Oma would call it). I am proud to present - "Coneflowers in Leslieville".



I love it.