Over the last few years I've done a few workshops for a group of quilters that meets every week to work on various projects. We've done a little drawing, painted on tiles and made paper and hand stitched books among other things. This group is a wonderful, organic group that contracts and expands naturally as time goes on. Somebody moves away, another joins and another travels half way around the world. They come together as they have for about 30 years I think and they laugh and cry about all those things women laugh and cry about when they've spent all that time together. They know each other's stories and each other's hearts. My old art group was like that and it's wonderful to be invited into this group and welcomed even though I'm not really a quilter....
Today I was there helping a few put some books together and listening to and watching these women talk while they work just seemed like a calming, healing thing in a world filled with worries, illness and distractions.
For these few hours those things got shared for a minute or two but then the fabric, yarn and thread took over. Thoughts of color and shape, size and texture occupied their minds and hands just as they used to occupy the minds and hands of women through the centuries. I have drawers full of linens and quilts made by generations of such women in my own family.
I've begun to sew again recently, making the puppets I used in my presentations. I will show them tomorrow but for today I just want to share some of the work I saw and enjoyed while there. This last quilt was designed and made by my next door neighbor who I have known for about 25 years now. Her talent is extraordinary and seeing these quilts she designs always blows me away. She sells the patterns for many of the quilts she designs but I for one would rather just look at hers ;-)