Returning.

The Basement Quilt

 Hello. It's been a while. A very long while.

The winds are changing ever so slightly and it feels like it is time to come back to my blog after a very long hiatus. 

Lots has happened over the last few years. We built a new house, we adopted a young boy and I've moved on from the school craft stall. The Bubster, who is no longer a bubster but a big 11 year old boy, has been immersed in school, ballet and recently was a delegate at the Montessori Model United Nations in New York City. He and I just spent a month traveling the states together, visiting family and having a wonderful grown up adventure. It was marvelous.

What have I been doing instead of writing here? Well, Facebook! :-) I love the immediacy with family and friends and the fun conversations that arise. However, I'm hankering to dig deeper into my creative process and try to develop some discipline once again. My hope is that I can come back to blogging as a way to engage myself with my artwork and other creative interests. It's time.

So to get into the swing of things, above is a detail of a long term project I have been enjoying. I began this quilt about 2 years ago and it's one of those things that comes out, goes away, comes out, goes away. I am now at a point where the end is in sight and I think I can get there. "I think I can I think I can....!" It is to be for our youngest boy, who we adopted a little over 2 years ago.

To back up a bit, quilting is not my main go-to thing but I love to play with fabric. About 5 years ago, I had the pleasure of going through my mothers 3 story house after she had moved into assisted living. There was a lot to get through. Like all creative people, my mother loved to make things and had the supplies to prove it. My entire childhood wardrobe consisted of clothes made for me by my mother and grandmother. 

While sorting through the boxes and boxes of stored fabric and remnants, I found the perfect collection stored in a broken down box in the basement. It housed an assortment of scraps and off cuts from Mom's many years of making clothing; scraps from the 1930's which would have belonged to my grandmother right up to the 1970's. My clothes. 

So I shipped it home. Eventually I got to cutting. Then piecing. And then finally, hand quilting. Whenever I pick it up, I think of my mother in her sewing room, her sewing machine rumbling along, or my grandma fitting wedding gowns on her clients, or skirts from photos from the 1950's, or those cute shorts, or the pinafore dress from 5th grade. It is a rumble jumble of colour and memories, all pieced together in no particular order, just because. It's me, my mother and my grandmother.

It's almost, almost..........almost done. And there are plenty of scraps to make 1 or 2 more!