I recently created a quilt that really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and yet felt entirely organic and natural while I was creating it. I used a quilt pattern by the one and only Heidi Parkes called a Vignettes Quilt. The Vignettes Quilt (only $15 on Parkes website) is an interesting pattern in that it presents you with loose open-ended guidelines and suggestions centered around the elements and principles of design for each quilt block. Ultimately it’s up to the artist to use these basic prompts as the framework for their quilt.
I chose a color scheme of orange and green – my current color obsession – and the inspiration of one of my 10 year old daughters earlier drawings of a castle in 3D. She was playing with the idea of transparent forms and the way that she depicted space opened my mind to a wealth of ideas. I took this concept and ran with it, creating my own interpretation of spaces to explore the idea of place and home.
While working on my blocks I started to bring in plant-like shapes and imagery as well as gestural line to continue my story. I brought in browns and blacks and played with line in both fabric and stitch. I quickly began to see a lot of elements repeat and the overall cohesion of the images began to fall together.
A small inclusion of text “Dwell” (in my own handwriting) alludes to the house-like forms and the pivotal aspect of home that grounds the quilt. I love the multifaceted interpretation of the word dwell to mean to live in, to abide, to pause… etc. I used this word as the focus of my very first big show as an undergraduate student over 15 years ago. Interestingly enough, I was dealing with similar imagery in that show – disassociated windows and doors juxtaposed with staircases dominated that particular body of work. Now I find myself revisiting these ideas with the liberty provided by many more years of lived life, of hindsight.
Dwell has become the unofficial title of this quilt. I pieced it together on a solid white background in a way that I have extended the blocks with additional embroidery. I love the play of positive and negative space that was created in the intuitive placement of the blocks. I played with alternative arrangements but in the end I liked the way that this placement activated the shape of the whole.
Now all that is left is to hand quilt the top – no easy feat. I backed it with orange fabric and have it all pinned together. Now it’s time to simply find little spurts of energy to hand quilt it together. I plan to use a white button thread to quilt organically curved and mismatched lines throughout the background while leaving the majority of the quilt blocks untouched. I hope this works like it seems in my head. Don’t we always hope for that, though?
Overall I was very happy with the Vignettes Quilt pattern by Parkes, it was easy to follow, endlessly inspirational, and very thorough. I’m currently working on Parkes’ Love Letters quilt pattern on Creativebug, my third quilt using her patterns. I dedicated it to my kitties as my sweet old man, Jimmy, recently passed away leaving a huge void in my life. It’s been a great way to process my grief. I look forward to sharing more from this quilt soon.
Cry The Bird 