I have spent a good portion of this week ripping apart and recreating a quilt I crated in 2020 that I liked.

Well, I liked two thirds of it. One third of it just didn’t work at all.

It’s a quilt depicting contrasts. The main character is the little girl.

I am very happy with her depiction. The rendering is child-like. The subtle shading on the face suggests features without actually creating features. She feels like the depictions of me and my sister in our old family scrapbooks. Just what I hoped for.

The second character is more complex. The idealized woman.

She is the opposite of the little girl. Sophisticated. Worldly. And there is some personal family history here too. The photos of spoons show our family flatware. It was my grandmother’s, then my mother’s, then mine, and now my daughter’s. But, more than being a bit of family history, it speaks to me of the idealized wishes of many women in the 1950’s when I was in elementary school. Silver flatware and good china are not actually life necessities. But they were very important to my Mom. So, I have placed the silver in an abstract background with other symbols of houses.

The part of the quilt that I didn’t like was the foreground. I had created a green area intended to suggest a green lawn. But, well, it fell flat. In fact, the whole piece looked flat to me. So I was disappointed.

Then this summer, visiting a farm in North Georgia, I photographed this picket fence. I let the idea percolate a while.

I created a large photo transfer of the fence, sized to fill the quilt, and cut it out to remove the background. I was not sure this would work. Then this week was my chance to experiment with the new plan

Here is the quilt in progress. The picket fence – a realistic photo – will be in the bottom third. The picket fence is an image I associate with an idealized home. The little house with a picket fence. So, it fit perfectly with the concepts of this quilt.

I have gotten as far as ripping off the backing on the bottom third, cutting away all the part I don’t want, collaging the fence into place, and beginning the stitching. I feel like I am breathing new life into this work.

Here are a few lessons I am discovering.

First. This is a terrible idea. What I mean is that this is definitely not the smartest way to construct a finished quilt. Planning it out and putting the pieces together correctly makes a lot more sense. As I get to the final stitching on this, it will actually be hard to do. I’ll have to stitch in the middle of the quilt where it’s very hard for my sewing machine to reach. I’m just going to have to make it work.

Second. This is a great idea. I’m glad I did not feel married to the first version, even though it was complete. I just knew it wasn’t right.

Third. The reality of a photograph can be unusual and interesting when combined with other non-photographic methods of surface design. Just as the little girl’s rendering contrasts with the rendering of the idealized woman, the photos are visually different from the other fabrics. I think this does something in the viewer’s brain to spark curiosity. The brain says, “Oh, look, a photo. That’s real. I know what that is.” At the same time the brain is perceiving non-photographic patterns and textures. It’s a little jarring, and invites the viewer into the story to make sense of it.

I’m looking forward to having this quilt recreated and put back together. I’ll post it here when it’s done so you can see how the story turns out.

This quilts i part of a series I have been working on for several years on the journeys of a young girl. If you would like to see more of them, please visit the journeys and Stories Gallery on my website:
https://www.bobbibaughstudio.com/journeys-and-stories/

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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