I’ve started a couple of long range quilting projects and a
workshop I took with Debbie Bates in July is tying together the past to these
very future oriented projects.
Travel
I’d been saving this delightful vintage photo with a saying
that really spoke to me waiting for the right project. That project was a four page fabric book we
created in our first class. It’s created
entirely of fabric and embellishments that have travelled with me (I still can’t
believe that I actually thought I’d spend my evenings in Australia crazy
quilting) or that I found on my travels.
Finally a place to combine shells, rocks, pearls, paua, ribbons…. The original photo came from Queenisms.com.
And here’s a spectacular bit of sun dying that I did on the
one gloriously hot and sunny day we had this summer. June 30 and plus 33. Compared to the fabric painting I did this
winter, I can’t believe what happens when sun and heat speeds up the
drying. The leaf shapes around the edge
are all from our yard and the texture in the center comes from sprinkling
pickling salt on the wet freshly painted fabric. It’s been stitched to some flannelette with a
grid of six inch squares.
My vision is that this will come with me on our year of
travel and each week’s square will get a bit of stitching or autographing or appliquéing
of fabric from the trip. Perhaps some
spice stained fabric from a bazaar, or some felted wool from along the silk
road. A sort of a fabric journal is what
I’m thinking of. I even have a wild idea
of where and how I’m going to create the backing for this quilt, but it’s a
secret til it actually happens.
Career/Retirement
It’s become a tradition at the Health Unit to make an
autographed quilt when someone retires so they have something personal to
remember us by. In 2012, we were talking
about this as we were planning the latest retirement party and someone asked,
jokingly, who was going to make my retirement quilt. Thinking about it, I realized that I was very
much looking forward to making my own quilt, with the help of my friends and
colleagues. It’s going to be a flower
garden much like this picture.
I soon realized that I wanted my garden of memories to
include as many of my former colleagues as I could find and persuade to
autograph one of the flowers. I’m
excited to spend the next few years hunting people down. As I’ve been doing this, it’s been a great
trip down memory lane.
Who’s going to make my
retirement quilt?
I will she said,
excitedly.
(To be completed in
2020 or so)
The second class I took with Debbie Bates was to start to
create an altered book – something I’ve enjoyed looking at in magazines but
never had an idea of what or how to do it.
The first step was to find a book that I was prepared to take pages out
of and add things to, which was surprisingly hard for a passionate reader. After days of browsing books that I have
stashed all over the house, I found the perfect one and read it cover to cover
for one last time. It’s a classic
nursing text from the early 1980s that I knew I had but had forgotten what
exactly it was about. Actually, I hadn’t
forgotten because I realize that how I have worked with clients and lived my
life over the last thirty years I would have first read about in this
book. More memories, and a fun way to
journal important bits from the past.
Here’s pictures of the front and back – and as I get some of the middle
in a more finished way I’ll share them too.
I think that this will be a never ending project. The book?
Novice to Expert by Patricia Benner.
I think I would have heard about it from Maureen Leahy when I was taking
a post basic mental health nursing certificate.
