Dancing with Dryads

Because of a clerical error at my local college, I've spent my fall taking the 'Design for Textiles' class again.  It's really not any problem to take this class again.  The last time was when I first entered the program 3 years ago, having no idea what I was doing.  To repeat it with the full program curriculum under my belt now has been  a lot of fun.  Not being worried about fulfilling course outcomes and grades, I get to sit in this creative environment and just play, follow my muse, and see where it leads me.

One day, my muse led me through Lake Ontario Park on a search for acorns.  I never did find acorns, but I did have a good chat with some chipmunks who took me to see the Dryads .

Okay, fine, maybe it didn't happen quite like that, but there were spirits in the trees that day that I've never noticed before in all the times that I walked through the park over the years.  I believe they were out that day, celebrating Autumn; it was a beautiful day.

Captivated by the Dryads, especially the playful one leaning backwards of that branch, I decided to capture them in fibre.

I figured that  maybe I could make a quilt as my final class project.  Umm, yes, a quilt.  That word still makes me uncomfortable. Quilt.  I'm not a quilter.  I don't piece, I have no desire to sit and sew tiny cut up pieces of fabric together, and the whole prospect of actually "quilting" is scary.  I never know where to start with deciding what kind of stitching a quilt needs.  But I did have a large piece of autumn coloured fabric I died some time ago hanging around in my stash, and I did want to do something atypical of what people expect to see from my art work....

So, with not a lot of time on my hands before the project deadline, I started a whole-cloth painted quilt.  With freezer paper resists, dyes, paints, inks, and some leaves I turned my studio, and my life, upside down and got to work.  I had this all figured out in my head, and I learned that "I have a vision" isn't always good enough.  I had a vision, and I realized that I don't really know how to paint.  Why would I choose to paint a quilt if I don't know how to paint?!  No time for second guessing myself, I just worked with the knowledge I do have.

Every thing seemed to want to work against me.  I sunprinted on the day it decided to rain shortly after I got the paint applied.  I pressed leaves to use as rubbing plates and they all blew away as I was sunprinting.  The paint store was out of wood grain rockers.  It rained every day for a week so I couldn't go outside and do my messy creating, and I became panicked over my timeline.  Not being a painter, I couldn't figure out how actually go about painting the quilt.  I had the idea in my head that all the trees needed to be painted brown-like real trees-but after I painted the first one, I hated it.  I really, really hated it.  I realized then that I wouldn't be able to make the quilt look like it did in my head.  Every idea I came up with after that, didn't stick with my "whole-cloth" way of working, and I was determined to at least stick with the design challenge.  It was anxiety provoking to work in 2 dimensions, but that was the challenge to myself (no matter how stupid I think that idea turned out to be!).

Looks better with leaves!

Finally, exhausted, I just had to sit down, finish crying over it, and decide how to make it work.  I wish I had taken pictures at every stage of its creation so I could see how it went from liking it hating it and back again, but I it's too late for that now.  It doesn't matter really, what's more important to me is the journey I took through the creation of this quilt.  I rose to the challenge of working outside my realm of comfort.  I puzzled through it and had to decide on every stitch and every drop of paint.  Yes, it's "pretty different" (as a class mate said) of the way I usually create, but it's still definitely mine.

 Though I didn't manage to get all the quilting done by the last night of class (no real big surprise there, I know), it's well under way, and has great promise of actually getting finished.