A quilt for moving on.

It was in the aftermath of all the change and grief earlier this year, that this quilt was born. In the small, silent privacy of my new sunroom studio. When the repetition and attention and clear, quiet whites and greys, and just a touch of blue were having a tangible effect on my soul.

I had brought out my neutral bucket of scraps, (I couldn't imagine working with colour), fished around for the strips, then grabbed the leftovers from my Children at Play pinnies, and the linen ones, and the 'white on white' prints that I had used for a custom order quilt last year and never looked at again. I think it was the memory of that quilt, warm, calm, traditional, that made me feel grounded. And I wanted to create something like it again.

My first log cabins were very intentional. Each piece sewn and ironed and trimmed with care and design. And then (as I wrote here), as that lost its therapy, I started to chain piece. Then, more recently, as I started to feel more myself, I began introducing more pops of colour. More flat solids and less tone on tone. More modern prints and less care whether it matched.

I finished up all the 8" blocks and laid them out on the floor of my friends' house to ask what she thought. I had planned to make different sized blocks and have them scattered throughout. But the regularity of the squares made such a simple, pretty baby quilt.
Cath said to me, "That's pretty, but the other one you have in mind will be wonderful."
I'm so thankful now for that encouragement. It gave me the extra little push I needed to keep going when I felt like finishing up there. I felt the shift from this being all about safety (which was just right in the beginning) to realising I was in a place again where I could go beyond my natural attention span, or motivation, to create something I really wanted. And it feels good to be here again!

I'm joining in 'Festival of Strings'!