Part 2 -- What I learned about me in this project.
Yesterday I was wearing my "Quilting is my Therapy" t-shirt. I chose that one over "I quilt because choking people is frowned upon" but they both mean about the same thing. But it's true, while quilting I think about things and people and ponder myself and the universe, it is a form of meditation or therapy for me.
I'm really trying to change some things in my life as I face my declining vision. The "old" me would have made something very similar yet elevated and made a quilt more easily appreciated by others. I'd still use scraps but each of the squares would be carefully chosen and would make faceted gems scattered across the top, with movement and flow to the colors, and I would have put in a little black attic window to make them look like they were floating above the background. It would have taken significantly more time to do, but something 3D is on my list of things to do.
But this project was about using precut squares stash and not doing it as planned and letting it happen, which is not the way I usually work. I got distracted a couple of times from both this one and the Confetti quilt (which both came from the same box of precuts) that the goal was to use fabrics that were otherwise hard to use.
I've been working really hard at using my stash -- some of know that is easier said than done. Instead of waiting for the perfect project for each piece, I'm trying to consider that whatever I'm doing is the time to use that fabric.
But the reality is that I am dealing with vision issues and sometimes that is in the forefront of my mind. In addition, there was the loss of my sweet little dog Sandy and so while bright there is a darkness to this quilt. I do feel a pressure and that my time is running out. Although I hate to use the phrase, "this one time at band camp" we played a modern piece that was written as the composer was dying, there were these strident little SOS signals (three short/three long/three short) that would come in and out of the theme. It was sort of lost on me 40 years ago but in many ways this quilt was like that for me.
I've never really been visually oriented, not a picture taker or picture looker but I do record my life in terms of music. If I hear "Band on the Run" by Wings as an example, it takes me right back to the summer of 1974, what I was doing and what I looked like and what was on TV, etc. As a poster, my theme song is Ice Ice Baby
This quilt's theme was Make Your Own Kind of Music by Mama Cass Elliot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbSM02_1k34
My fabric collection was once described by a good friend as "the humane society of fabric" and I think that's a pretty good description. It was partly because of Sandy that I was so intent on using the "worst" fabrics.
But this project is not sad, it is a process. And in that process I learned that I can still do what I can, and that is pretty darn good even if not what it once was.
And here's a picture of Sandy a couple of years ago. When I tried posting it right side up it came up sideways -- every now and then I get that. So here it is sideways.