Process as Relief
Letting Techniques Take The Strain (but the door is always open to ideas and learning...)
As a break from my more fluid, organic and outcome-unknowable making, it’s been nice to settle back into a project which is more technique-based, and which has a tangible fixed outcome - a patchwork project I’ve had on the back-burner for a few months.
First of all, I need to say, I am a novice when it comes to patchwork and quilting (obvious, I know, from the mismatched joins), but there’s a satisfaction to learning a skill and a definite release from work with more philosophical thinking (although I’m sure I could find something philosophical to say about the project if I tried!).
Over the last couple of years I’ve collected various pieces of Indigo-dyed cotton and linen. Lots of it has been sourced on Etsy from China and Japan, and other pieces via fabric bundles (did you know Toast sell off bundles every now and then?), and even old clothes. The stash has been lovely to have, but I’ve been overwhelmed at the thought of actually starting a project with them, so before Christmas I decided to commit, to choose a pattern (16 inch pinwheel star variation), and plan out 6 x 5 sections to make a bed-sized quilt.
As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, my sister and I always had an Altair Design Pad at hand, and we spent hours searching out patterns with our felt tips. Choosing a patchwork pattern upon which to base the quilt felt a bit like choosing and Altair Design sheet.
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