WWQP Bulletin Board Chat

I taught quilting for a decade in the early seventies/early eighties and at that time began designing many of my own quilts for my students and myself, some of which appeared in a national women's magazine in Canada. One, which appeared in 1987, Arctic Reflections, lay dormant for many years...in fact, the design was commissioned by the magazine and I did not keep the original pattern designs. Always one project ahead in my mind, I could not summon up any creative energy a few years ago, having dealt with trying medical issues in the household and I hit a very dry period of creativity in my life. And then, one day opening up my inbox in the morning I found an email from a quilter north of Edmonton, Alberta who said: my aunt was in the process of making your quilt pattern, died and now I'm trying to finish it off for her daughter, my cousin. Do you have the pattern still as I can't find it amongst her belongings. And so began what has been for me a very interesting journey of the Inuit and where they live in the Eastern Arctic. This quilter traced off the images so carefully onto tissue paper and placed them into the mail for me that I was able to redraw the quilt design and that was all I needed to remove the block of inactive creativity which had plagued me for a year or more. I remade the original design again, adjusting the border designs which had never pleased me and went on to create another Arctic quilt pattern and now, I am not replicating but interpreting an outfit based on the the Inuit woman's amauti and trousers, which you see above. These women are throat singing, which is special to the Inuit. I've had to draw my own clothing pattern from scratch, which has been a challenge and in fact, it's the first outfit I've ever made where my enthusiasm has lead to some insecurity on my part, waxing and waning, not sure of what my interpretation will look like or whether the outfit will turn out as I'd imagined it in my mind originally. Sometimes I get half-way through a project like this and wonder why in the heck I ever started it in the first place. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm on the home stretch and will be glad to put it to bed and be done with it. I'm not sure that I can say I've even enjoyed sewing and quilting it because I've been completely insecure about this design all along. I wonder why I do what I do, at times like this. The challenge is this: will the end product match the image I had originally in my mind; will it work out and will it take off, creatively in the end. We'll see.

Rosey, in Canada, who has a day of sewing ahead of her. And then, that's it. Thankfully, I can move on to my next project.