February already. My studio is a wild mess. Three quilt tops actively in the works all at the same time, with more waiting in the wings — and only not out in front of my hungry eyes due to lack of available surface area and wall space. It’s a hurricane of fabric yardage in here and I feel at the center of it, in the eye, calm, but with the energy swirling around me. It’s a deeply pleasant feeling.
The focus of the moment is a quilt for one of my dearest friends. We met more than a decade ago in California, but she's lived in Paris for many years now and my opportunities to see her beautiful face have been few and far between. I plan to go visit her there in April for the first time, and it's my hope to carry this quilt with me when I go. A relatively constrained timeline for a quilt (though as last summer’s commission taught me, far from impossible) and so finishing this top has been the main objective since I've been back in the studio. It's been an interesting attempt at balance, this one; trying to both (always) make something that sings to me but also, in this case, not overwhelm the piece with the weird or the difficult, the too loud or too brash — trying to keep the recipient's taste in mind. In the end it will only contain three different fabrics pieced into the top; a difficult concession for my current color-craving brain, but it has grown on me the longer I live with it on the wall. Learning not to gild the lily, and all that. The symbolism, the focus and the feeling that I want to be held in this piece is of foremost importance to me, and I think the simplicity helps telegraph those things.
The basic pattern idea for this top — a circle of stars, set in gold — has been in my head since a few years ago when I made a star quilt for my cousin's new baby. When I knew I would make a quilt for K, it immediately resurfaced as the obvious plan; likewise when I quite accidentally stumbled upon this fabric (while hunting for something unrelated), I knew it was the undeniable choice for her. I am obviously also continuing to scratch my own acid yellow itch, and it’s been a pleasure running a field of this through the machine, as I know it will also be a deep pleasure to sit for hours with it in my lap as I quilt it. I plan to take it with me next month on the newly minted ritual of my solo birthday trip; and I am already looking forward to spending that time alone with it, imbuing it, one stitch at a time, with all that I hope to bring across the ocean with me and wrap around my friend as she enters into a new chapter of her life.
The studio light (or lack thereof) makes capturing this color nearly impossible. An almost neon yellow with the slightest green undertone. It feels alive and dynamic under sunlight, but slightly dingy on my warehouse studio wall.
A self-drafted curve! Miracles upon miracle. Also: yellow and blue in abundance.
While in the studio and on public transit and walking my dog, I've been listening to master craftsman and furniture maker Peter Korn’s book, Why We Make Things and Why It Matters. During some of the very first moments when this book entered my brain through my ears, I felt tears spring into my eyes. I felt an intense, emotional appreciation for the direct, approachable articulation of what I believe any maker finds both inherent, immutable, and also largely ineffable about the process of their work. Because I am listening (and not physically reading; also usually while moving about) I have had less opportunity to capture the many quotes of Peter’s that I want to keep near at hand. But in writing now about this quilt that I am making for my friend, it feels impossible not to reference some of what this book has been affirming to me, gently through my earbuds, as I cut, piece, sew, iron, and envision this object into being.
I will suggest that a craft object can be a potent source of meaning and identity for both maker and respondent.
Inescapably, we are beings for whom objects have spiritual weight. […] The physical details of the [craft object] speak to a more ancient materialism, deep in the human psyche. This is the belief that objects have mana: that the miraculous power to provide spiritual sustenance resides in the object itself, not in the achievement of ownership.
— Peter Korn
Yes, yes, and yes. Listening to this quiet, calming book while making what I hope to be a potent talisman for one of my life’s deep loves — I am reminded that I likely have to explain myself and my work far less than I often find myself trying, embarrassed, to do. Some of us — if not most or outright all, when given the proper unobstructed breathing room — do have an inherent connection to our material objects, and an innate social emotional understanding of what it means to make, and to share: the communication, Peter calls it, that is the interpersonal and shared experience of “thinking with things.”¹
If you want to hear more on this philosophy and perspective (and I wholeheartedly recommend it) you can hear Peter himself speaking more about his book here. [A note that this video is not captioned, and has quite a bit a mouth noise, if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing.]
Lastly, a lovely thing happened to me yesterday morning, unrelated to these quilt and craft musings except in that everything is related to these aforementioned things. My studio is in an industrial part of town, with no nearby amenities outside of — miraculously — Portland’s best bagel shop. I've written here before about my bagel shop routine; it’s been a treasured part of my time in this neighborhood. Yesterday morning, as I walked in, I was greeted with "Hi Elizabeth, what can we get for you today?" Y'all, I'm a regular.
I haven't had this experience since I lived in New York from ages 18-22, and worked at a little retail shop in the village all those four years. I used to go to the deli next door and order the same thing every time (what that was, I can no longer remember). They didn't know my name there — that's not how bodega orders work — but at some point during my tenure the cashier began to just see me walk in and say, "The usual?" with an eyebrow raised, and have me rung up before I even got to the counter. The feeling of belonging, of place, that accompanies this small sort of ritual is hard to overstate. I remember clearly the first time it happened. I remember too, when I quit that job, and I knew I would never step foot in that deli again: it was a real loss I felt. A small quiet loss, but a one named and known. I lost my place, as it were.
So now here, too, in this strange corner of a town I've somehow lived in for decade (!?!) — I have that again. A sense of being a small known part of this larger whole. I'm not able to describe what that feels like; only, that I am intimately aware of the good fortune of the timing, that this external sense of belonging comes also as I feel, too, in more consistent, comfortable, recognition of myself.
An overcast afternoon image of the current studio madness, and the three quilts-in-progress. Out of sight: innumerable piles of fabrics strewn across every flat surface. (Stars abound!)
¹ Peter references Sarah Kuhn’s book (which I have not read) and this phrase, throughout his work.