Journal Quilt 2007

Here is my Journal Quilt, Let Them Be. It is my first time participating and this is the last year so I suppose this is my last Journal Quilt as well.

And, here is the text from my Journal Quilt statement:


Creative Quilting techniques used: water-soluble pastels on fabric (p. 72); large hand stitching (p. 72); beading (p. 72); hand-dyed fabrics (p. 79); felting (p. 150).

The text (part of a poem by Kahlil Gibran) touched me as it so fully represents my thoughts regarding children. The full text of the poem is below:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness; for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I began my quilt by drawing my image and the words with a Pigma pen on white cotton fabric. I then “painted” the cloth with Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels, acrylic pearlescent ink, traditional tube watercolors and Crayola spider writers. I extensively hand stitched on the piece with cotton, rayon and metallic embroidery floss. I used two layers of batting because I wanted to create texture. I needle felted the bottom and added grass blades using pieces of my hand-dyed fabric by simply stitching them down with the floss. I then beaded the wings and the antennae.

I started several journal quilts but none wanted to be finished as much as this one. I also tried several new techniques as a result of this challenge including painting on lutradur, monoprinting, dyeing fabric (first time outside of a class) and creating digital imagery using Corel Paint Pro. Although not all of these techniques were used in the final quilt, I learned so much from pushing myself to try new things. In addition, I learned it is okay to let a piece tell me what it needs and not to work too hard to include something new. There is a balance between trying new approaches but also staying true to your own artistic voice and vision.