Paper quilts
And quiet seasons
With summer in the rearview mirror, I’m lingering in a liminal space. June-July-August was a whirlwind of work, teaching, and travel. Up ahead on the horizon, I have big plans waiting for me: setting up a new studio, more teaching, a return to YouTube, and a trip to South America. But for now, I am resting.
At the end of my August teaching trip, I returned home to a life that had been on pause for 5 weeks in every way except for one. While my house had been empty, my garden was bursting. Sunflowers pushed skyward and then toppled over, lavender spilled over pathways, and wild strawberries strangled everything within a five foot radius. Three (3!) volunteer tomato plants found footing between paving stones and produced fruits. There was a biblical proliferation of marigolds, slugs, and spiders. I arrived home just in time to witness the aftermath.
I made a half-hearted attempt to tame the chaos, but quickly gave up. Much like my garden, I’m ragged and spent, toppled over and going to seed after a summer of frantic productivity. I’ve lost all sense of discipline and momentum. Resuming my daily routines feels like a cup I can’t possibly fill. So I’m giving myself permission to go fallow for a while and have a quiet season.
I dislike the term “sewjo” almost as much as “perfect fit,” but I will admit that I’ve lost all interest in sewing. I try not to fight it, since it’s a normal part of being creative. Sometimes our attention wanders. Other times, it gets lost in the woods and hibernates for a season or two. I find it’s best to treat it like the wild animal that it is and to let it go where it wants. I’m often surprised by where it leads me.
Instead of sewing or gardening or doing most of the chores on my list, I’ve been sucked down an unexpected rabbit hole since returning home: I’m making paper quilts.
Paper quilts are my version of paper collage. I harvest blocks of color from old magazines and picture books, then tile them together using quilting motifs. They might eventually become inspiration for life-sized fabric quits. Or they might not. The joy of filling my sketchbook with these is enough.
I began making paper quilts in Lindsay Stripling’s color class a few weeks ago. They started as simple studies to investigate color relationships, but they quickly turned into a way to represent memories, emotions, and loved-ones through abstraction and color.
I like making paper quilts because they are good practice for improv quilting with scraps. It’s a way to train myself to work within the boundaries of an existing collection of colors and textures rather than acquiring more. It constrains the creative process just enough to permit quick decision-making.
One benefit of paper quilting is that it’s much cheaper than fabric quilting. You can often find old books and magazines for a few dollars or occasionally for free. It also takes far less time than actual quilting, so it’s a quick way to iterate on an idea. Most of these studies were completed in an afternoon, which is about as long as my attention span wants to linger on a project these days. I can play with colors for as little or as long as I want to, with low stakes and no expectations.
Paper quilting has quickly become an irresistible habit each morning. Every time I think I’ve exhausted an idea, another one pops up, so I keep going. There is a meditative quality to this type of work; it is a river of sustained focus, and I can easily flow along for hours as I’m sorting, snipping, and pasting. It’s like sewing, just with different tools and faster results.
Do you have a favorite activity for your quiet seasons? What do you do when you don’t feel like sewing? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time,
Stacey
You had me just at “lingering in a liminal space”. New motto drop
wow that is my platonic ideal of a garden-- unruly and glorious. Sometimes I do embroidery, sometimes I go on baking sprees. But I am a big believer in a hammock, a detective novel and a cold drink. Read one chapter, take a nap. We have lost the joy, the luxury, of doing absolutely nothing. I think it's an important skill to recover...