2/13/2003

here's my quilted quilt! still unbound on the edges, but Squib has talked me through the binding process and if I ever get a spare seven minutes, i'll get out the sewing machine.

I think the quilt looks great, though the flowery border was the quilter's idea, not mine. A lesson to be learned about collaborating with someone whose aesthetic vision is unknown. They're not oppressive or anything, I just prefer less representational things and I didn't make that clear enough.

that said, i still think the quilt came out well and am dreaming of future quilts. using the pre-cut squares and the interfacing takes a lot of the intimidation out of it if you've ever thought about making one, or just want to play with colors a bit -- try it! (check out the post below about a discount if you are ordering from C and S.)

i'm thinking on my next quilt which may be an off-kilter log cabin of some sort. of course, we don't have a log cabin. it's more of an adobe bungalow... and though tradition says red center for the hearth... maybe terra cotta would be more appropriate. hee hee, i guess it might be fun to make a highly symbolic quilt -- using colors from the house and environment. if it ever stops raining i'll sample some colors. (what a wuss i am, it's been raining for two days -- two days out of the whole year and yet already i find the inconvenience a nuisance...)

i still like the idea of the pixel quilt; i still think an image of a face would be cool, but i've played around with some images and haven't found a photo that has the right amount of detail and contrast that i like well enough to bother capturing on cloth in perpetuity. a dorky snapshot just doesn't quite have the symbolic weight. i toyed with a couple of ella sleeping, but there's not enough contrast to make the image really readable at low res.

More recently, on my walks about town, i've started thinking it would be fun to use an image of something industrial that is part of our daily landscape. there's this big elaborate pipe thing/shutoff valve that i pass by every day and i often find myself wondering about it's design and whether it's solely "form follows function" or did someone put some aesthetic thought into it? it's actually kind of pretty. it's new and has been painted with what i assume were some aesthetic choices... or maybe 12 inch pipes come blue and the valve wheels are red factory direct? anyway, i've been meaning to snap some photos of it and things like it and see where they took me. telephone poles... construction cranes...

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