It’s a lot of work to write a book. The sense of accomplishment is great when it’s done. It’s fun to see it on the bookshelf, and it’s even more fun when someone buys it from you. But you never really know just how amazing it is going to feel until you actually experience this–when someone makes a quilt from your book and you see it finished.
That’s how excited I felt when I went on Facebook and lo and behold, Kathy Grom had made the Chevron Quilt from my first book. This chevron quilt is a little bit different than the average. I constructed it in columns rather than the half square triangle way in which many are done. And, there is a color progression to it. The chevrons are a bit “chunkier” than other ones.
Here is Kathy’s excellent interpretation of my quilt. I think she’s downright genius for the way that she has done this.
I love how she followed the instructions of adding a little “quirk” to it. Look at the odd piece in the first column, and the unusual addition of the pink piece in the third to the left column.
That’s my contribution to the quilt world. I love to see quilters adding something just a little bit quirky to the mix in their quilts. It’s the ingredient that makes a quilt interesting. A quilt can be beautiful, a quilt can be precise. A quilt can be a work of art. But, if it is not interesting and doesn’t make the viewer stop and really seek out the individual pieces among the entire mass of pieces, then it isn’t doing it’s job.
I feel that the best quilts will have an essense of quirk. They will take the viewer just beyond the overall impression to a deeper searching within the quilt.
Ever hear the expression that someone “Can’t see the forest through the trees”? It conjures up an idea, a concept. If a person is so embroiled in a situation, they sometimes loose the overall event or circumstance. That’s how it is with quilting, and of course, art in general. It’s actually the reverse. You should see the overall concept but then reverse it. Start picking up the trees from the forest. It a quilt loses you because you can’t see the trees through the forest then it’s not generating interest. The forest needs to be beautiful and cohesive, but then, you need to be drawn in enough that you want to see the trees.
Here’s another picture that I received this week from someone out east that is making a quilt from my book. It’s not completed yet, but it is very pretty. She has taken the picture from a little further away, but you can see how much fun she had with it.
Since the emphasis in my book is on scraps, I would say she did a wonderful job. It is scrappy! I can’t wait to see how she quilts it.
