Tag Archives: poetry

Journeying Through the Imagination (Part 2)

Well, it is a little past “tomorrow,” but at least I am here now.  And, the house is cleaner, more cookies are baked and I am working on rearranging my studio.  But that is another story.

The second quilt in my Deux entry is called Imagine Red.  One of the standout images of the poem is the “matador’s cape snapping.”  I was thinking how to incorporate a cape, then it occurred to me, why not have the quilt in the shape of a cape.  The last image of the poem:

The light tricks the sky, paints delights,warnings      was in my brain as I was going through my stash.  I had bought several batiks that were red shaded with other colors specifically for this quilt.  One that looked like a sunset/sunrise and one that looked like blood.  In my stash was the red ocean.  As soon as I saw it, I put it together with the batik and some darker hand-dyed scraps.  The first element became the red sea.

 

 

The next step was to start shaping the cape and seeing how the other elements would fit.
There was much trial and error.  There were come components that I made and then discarded because they just did not fit into the overall design.

 

Through this process, I became much more comfortable with eliminating what was not working, and adding new ideas.  I have always been careful of my use of fabric, cutting into special pieces of fabric only after careful thought.  In these two quilts, I found myself changing my mind after cutting, and feeling very comfortable with the result.  The scraps may or may not land in another quilt.  They may even find themselves in a bag for donation.  That is OK.

In the end, I am very pleased with the final product.