The beginnings of The Constellation Quilt

Yesterday I accompanied my Granny to a quilting workshop at the Kilchoan Learning Centre. I went along partially as research for The Constellation Quilt. However, I think my quilt will be rather less elaborate in construction than the table mats we were aiming to make; I didn’t get very far at all, and my efforts came out very wonky!

Despite this, the workshop provided a wealth of inspiration, as Joan Kelly, the workshop leader, introduced us to many quilts she had made over the years, all with their own stories and techniques. I was particularly intrigued by her use of three dimensional applique. A border stem was painstakingly rendered by tucking and sewing the rough edge underneath the flowing shape. Even more inspirational was Joan’s exquisite hand quilting. When the quilt has been finished and bound together, a design is sketched in dissolvable pen, and executed in running stitch all over the quilt. I think I’ll be brave and try this embroidery quilting technique on The Constellation Quilt.

I particularly liked this jewel print fabric, the backing of a quilt for Joan’s son.

My paltry efforts!

The beginnings of The Constellation Quilt are going rather more successfully (but then again, I haven’t sewn any of  it together yet!) I am currently spelling out my witchy fortune teller character Polly Kettle’s name in appliqué on squares of African print fabric in rich purples and golds; stardust colours.

I hope to have Polly’s “surname” finished soon, and then it’s on to embroidered and cross stitched sections of the quilt.

Winter's End

A week before the season’s end, I’ve finished my winter project. What To Look For In Winter? ends on a slightly melancholy note, with the heroine, who is now ready for a new season and new love, wondering what to look for when the weather turns colder again.

But what to

look for

in winter?

The yellow thread that I chose to embroider the phrase picks up the celandine and coltsfoot blossoms in the illustration, and contrasts with the blue moth print paper which lines the index.

Moths will continue as a motif in my next project. Now that I’ve finished my modest winter undertaking, I feel ready for a  more ambitious make; I’m going to attempt my first quilt. The Constellation Quilt will focus on my character Polly Kettle,  and writing about  the stars and night.

In the meantime, here’s the completed What To Look For In Winter, a winter’s worth of writing and sewing.

"When the gorse is out of bloom, then is kissing out of fashion"

English Rose

Your lips

have thawed

And there’s a

Spring

in your step.

This penultimate page of What To Look For In Winter harks back to the very first page, which addresses the English Rose heroine of the tale/poem:

The coming of spring has freed the English Rose from the cruel clutches of Winter, and now her heart and lips have thawed and she is ready for new life and new love. Only now will she truly “wilt no more“. There is a link between the original text and my own writing on this penultimate page; the mention of the folklore surrounding gorse and kissing and my mention of thawed lips, just as I wrote that the heroine’s lips were “too chapped and dry to kiss” on this page, which mentions and shows mistletoe:

Only one more page to stitch, and then I will embark on possibly my most ambitious project yet; a narrative quilt on the subject of the stars.

Unfurling

Ah, spring. The promise of new life, of green, of renewal. The promise of the seasons’, of life’s, cycles. I do a fair bit of recycling in my art and writing; my most recent page extended ideas of laddered hearts first explored in this cross stitch. These next two pages borrow from snippets of writing which have been revised over the years. It may not quite be spring, but I can feel myself growing more ambitious and optimistic for the months ahead… in a way I’m doing my own unfurling…

My heart is thawing

Unfurling slow

as ferns under frost.

Unfurling slow

as bowstring ferns

puckering up

their octopus

feelers.

Fissures

What To Look For In Winter continues apace; the book is getting rather fat now (perhaps it’s fattening up for the winter?), and I’ve promised myself that it will be finished by, or on, February the 28th, ready for the onset of spring, by when, perhaps, I may have found precisely what to look for in winter.

 Like roots split

the earth

Like fissures

in the ice

My heart

When held up

To the light

Was laddered.

I feel there is a hint of spring to this seemingly melancholy page; the heroine’s heart, may be laddered, broken, due to her treatment by her cruel husband Winter, or, like “fissures in the ice”, this laddering may be a sign that spring is on its way. You’ll have to wait to see the next few pages of What To Look For In Winter (and for me to stitch them!) to find out…

Mothball Moments

Mothball moments

Tumbleweed moments

Rolling on through the hours,

the years,

rolling on through 

the centuries.

This page is about the inertia of depression, when it can feel like the whole world is wintry and pressing down on you, yet passing you by. This is how the heroine of What To Look For In Winter feels, wedded to the cold-hearted Winter.

I wasn’t quite sure how to incorporate the imagery of the farmer into the last couple of pages of What To Look For In Winter; he didn’t quite fit in with my intended narrative. A tenuous link I can make is that the earth is rolled by the plough, just as the moments roll past the heroine of the fairytale.

As with the earlier “When I married Winter, the world was put on permafrost” page, I tore through the paper slightly with needle and thread, and patched up the reverse of my embroidered page with another embroidery, a fallen oak leaf which I imagine may be one of the fallen leaves of the illustration opposite the leaf, which features my very favourite animal (the fox, not the hounds!)

Plathitude

I actually began embroidering this piece during my holiday in the Highlands last summer. I think I was a little daunted by taking on an embroidery this size, and by the amount of satin stitch required to shade those arms, but now that I have more time on my hands I’ve picked it up again and finally finished it (and at quite a remarkable rate!)

As Alvy Singer says in Annie Hall: “Sylvia Plath – interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality“. I couldn’t help adding a dash of dark humour with the sweet treat cupcakes and the perfectly painted fingernails juxtaposed with the foreboding text. By a sheer coincidence it happens to be the 50th anniversary of the publication of Plath’s seminal novel The Bell Jar, and of the poet’s untimely death, this February. Of course, some Plath fans would say that I am distastefully poking fun at suicide with this piece. And to them I would say, you have to laugh or else you’d cry (or is that a little too facetious?)

In a way this piece is dedicated to my teenage years when I wrote atrocious poetry and a part of me really did want to be Sylvia Plath. Thank goodness I’m past that now (not sure I’m over the atrocious poetry though).

P.S. This post would just not be complete without a mention of incorrectsylviaplathquotes.tumblr.com, which does what is says on the tin. Peruse at your leisure.