Sneak Peeks are fun.
When I think of the word “prompt” there are several things that come to mind:
1) feeding a line to an actor to nudge the memory
2) offering hints or clues to help bring a memory to the surface or help a person remember
3) a word or phrase used to evoke ideas (as in art)
I kind of like it when a prompt gets my quilter brain in high gear, filling it with ideas. The faster the ideas the more I know I can start, work on, and actually finish a quilt. Sometime around the move Tracy Mooney, editor of Quiltmaker, and I were chatting about the themes for 2021. When she got to “camp” creative brain engaged and I probably responded for a couple of minutes with one idea or another until the idea of letters from home to a camper really grabbed my attention, and Tracy’s too. Within a relatively short amount of time I stitched, using the Quilters Select machine quilting ruler, legit looking yellow paper from when I was in school. For this I actually drew the lines first.
I can see myself sitting at the desk in second grade as we learned, and practiced cursive. Sometimes we folded the paper from top to bottom, in half, and in half again, and in half again, creating eight even spaces to get a feel for spacing.
I had three or four ideas for the submission process one big pieced quilt with four 8 1/2 x 11 yellow letters stitched in, or one big whole cloth style with letters strewn about as though looking down at the letters – dropping them on the floor after reading as though going through things, or four individually quilted letters. As we went through the process of deciding what would work best for the pages we decided on the four individually quilted letters. As I made each quilt something changed with each one, the dates are all different, how I approached the quilting is slightly different and how each one is “decorated” is slightly different. At first I quilted as though I was handwriting, meaning that each line of text started on the left and ended on the right. Burying all of that thread was a bit of a pain in the patootie so, as you’ll see in the pages I changed things up as I stitched.
As I look at the date on this particular quilt I’m remembering making my first loaf of bread was within a year or two of that date, maybe in 1977 or 1978. One of the quilts has the birthday of my Gramma and a friend.
You might notice here that the background changed. I changed from the grade school paper to college ruled paper.
I’ll share more of the quilts over the next couple of weeks. The quilts are in the July/August issue of Quiltmaker. Sometime later this week or early next week I’ll have another sneak peek of a quilt I just finished quilting for Maywood Studios. I can. not. wait! It’s a quilt where I was told to do whatever I want. The fabric line is gorgeous. Gorgeous. Head over here to see Michelle’s latest loaf of bread.
Happy Quilting,
Teri
