Back to Beastly Basics

Those of you in other countries may not know that the Northeastern United States has been annexed as a suburb of Greenland. The extreme cold, with its spears of gusting winds, has no mercy for this 200-year-old wooden house. Even little Billy sticks his head out the dog door, pulls it back in with a low moan, and retreats into a little ball on my his futon.

On one hand, the weather blows the winds of gratitude through me. A warm home, plentiful food, and no real need to brave the elements except by choice. That is, as the man from Motown says,some kind of wunnerful. I've been trying to maintain some balance by tooling away at my Gridlock quilt.

But, in truth, these past few months have formed a creative gridlock of theirown. Jude's What If series is really over:no matter how many times a day I click on the icon, she does not post something new there. So I found myself going back through her video class called Patchwork Beasts (which you can still get over on the Spirit Cloth shop). At first, I felt a bit like my 19-year-old self when Ricky broke up with me and all I could do was read his letters over and over again.

But eventually, I came to two realizations. First, Jude did not break up with me. Probably. And second, getting back to basics is a great way to (re)kindle creative embers. I just love her beasts, I just love her way of getting me to find my own.

This time around,I heard something that skipped past me on my first viewing: name your beasts as you create them. It gives them personality and helps define their story. I had a name in mind before I picked the first piece of cloth. So here it is, the first beast of 2014, ready to be stitched and storified.

Meet "The Polar Vortex."

Everything Comes Together

This is a quilt I made several years ago for our bed, from Liza's pattern called "Gridlock."The fabric is printed by Marcia Deerse (take a look at her work at marciadeerse.com)

Gridlock looked really great for the two days it was on our bed and it was fun to wake up to all the different color stories going on from block to block. Then, daughter (Thing One) decided it would look great on HER bed and Gridlock moved to Chicago.

I love this pattern and decided to do Gridlock Two, with a strong chain anchoring it to the bedpost because there are three more Things that amble by. But I guess the two years that I've been a groupie at Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth have really changed me. I didn't want to buy any fabric.  And I didn't want a quilt that looked like it came from a book.

But I wanted Gridlock.

So I started Gridlock Two, with two rules.First, I want this quilt to feel like ME, not a quilt book. Me, I am blue denim, brown cowboy boots, and red silk.  So that was my palette.  Second, I could use only fabric that comes from my shelves that I absolutely love...each piece has to be something that I have because I felt in love with it for its own self (see rule 1).

Then, as I started to assemble the blocks on the design wall, my eye caught the four or so pieces of cloth I have created by hand, my spirit cloths. You can flip back through my blog to find them. They never really found a good home and were just hanging out on my design wall. Well, look at that, all four are the same palette: blue, red, ivory. Isn't that just amazing? When I walk into an ice cream store, I will always get the same flavor (vanilla or banana). When I stitch from my heart, the same colors emerge...

Anyway, without the slightest Worship at the Altar of But I Can't Cut Up My Work, I sliced these babies down to the requisite 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 square and now they have a home! Talk about feeling like me.

So here's where I am so far, with many of the pieces not sewn together yet. And blocks may move around or get bounced once I get all 64 (sigh) done. 

 Here's an equally bad pic:

 It is really fun, everything I ever collected just because I loved it is all fitting together.  Like the old sugar bags:

L

Everything has a history:

I have the pocket to Himself's fat jeans and am going to use that for a center in one of the non-grid blocks. And in that pocket, I am going to stitch down the handkerchief I stole out of my dad's top dresser drawer when I moved away from Detroit. I've got some other mementos that will no doubt make their way into the blocks.

And on a totally unrelated note, here's some advice from Dr. John, who was on the soundtrack from the second season of Treme that I blasted while sewing today. (A good beat turns all the back and forth between iron and cutting table and design wall into a great Second Line  strut.) In that creaky ole voice, he sings this: "life is a near-death experience."

I'm trying my best to tie that into the rest of the post, like I usually do, but I'm stumped. I just liked it and its my blog. So there.