quilts

When I put yesterday’s fresh rounds of travel into TripIt, I saw a line that summed up my year:

You’ve traveled 43,660 mi to 44 locations.

I nodded, thinking to myself about the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met — or reconnected with — and felt profoundly grateful. I’ve been welcome in a lot of places over the past year, slept on a few new couches, met delightfully new recombinations of humanity. All unique, none replaceable.

Extended amounts of travel, over time, affect you. The anonymity of airports begins to rub off on you after a while. If you’re not careful, your web of connections to the world at large comes at the price of feeling a little  less seated in the place where you ostensibly live: when you consider where to shop, or where to order takeout from, you first reset your expectations by asking yourself what city you are in today.

This morning, while working to finish Invariant, I found myelf reflecting on the travel schedule I’ve been maintaining over the past year and the conflicting effects it’s had on my creative time. My stash has picked up fabric from Denmark, Oregon, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Holland, and England. That same travel schedule has made it very difficult for me to actually work through the projects in my head, making me feel that I am “unproductive” when, in fact, I’m just not at home long enough to dig into anything larger than what I call a “snack food project.”

It’s weird to say that you can walk into fabric stores — which are, by definition, riots of color and print — and feel a little bored, but I’ve been struggling with that in the past year or so as I’ve become more familiar with What’s Out There. There aren’t that many manufacturers of quilting fabric, and there’s a strong faddish element to what’s in / out / hot / not at any point in time. 

I’d heard about Liberty fabrics a time or two before actually getting to handle them in San Francisco for the first time, and I understood the allure once I handled them for the first time. They are light, tightly-woven, and silky in only the way that high-quality cotton voile can be. They don’t feel like quilt fabric, because they aren’t quilt fabric. They’re a different, lovelier, animal.

They’re also hideously expensive. 

Cinder and Smoke is a companion quilt to Sea and Sky, which I finished and sent out to a co-worker in our Portland office on the birth of his daughter. I thought it might be nice to use the same pattern again, but add in a bit of a different focus.

While working on Sea & Sky, I removed a few pieces I’d cut because they just didn’t work with the light, bright, clear-toned fabrics I’d chosen:

Knowing that Jonathan preferred more neutral, earth-toned fabrics, I found myself thinking of the greys and browns, the fabrics that I’ve had in my stash for years that never quite went with any other quilt top. I wondered what they would look like, if I asked these quiet, calm colors to stand together instead of trying to stand next to the bright shouty fabrics.

I was pleased when I laid them out, because I realized the colors weren’t boring or muddy. They’re just — quieter.

Stick with me here. You’ll read the first few paragraphs here and wonder how in the world this is going to have a happy ending, but … it does. I promise.

* * *

I have struggled to name this quilt, as well as to write about it. It goes without saying that 2011, thanks to Jeff’s accident, was … hell, let’s pick a few adjectives:

This entry needed to be made separately from the other one I just did, because it has a more limited audience. You guys know me; every now and then, I spot an antique quilt top that is the right combination of appearance + price, and I bite on it.

I bit on this one.

It doesn't have a name, and it doesn't have an owner.

The workmanship is solid but not spectacular; it took me looking closely to see that some blocks fudge here and there. I liked both the pattern and color sense; it is a classic pattern executed in a way that feels classic without being modern.

1930s-1950s. I don't feel a need to try to date this too closely. Not sure why; there is something about this quilt that made me say, "it is what it is, and I'm okay with that."