Morning Make December 2020

December saw a decided slow down, a necessary slow down. I was in the mood for hand stitching plus I wanted something that would carry me through the quiet holiday at home. Having done embroidery in February and already working on English Paper Piecing I decided to try something entirely new to me.

Pojagi is a Korean art form of patchwork. It can be done by machine, but I chose to go the original route of hand stitching. The end result is a finished seam from both sides. This means any Pojagi piece is entirely reversible.

It was never a one piece of fabric to represent one day in the month kind of project. Some days I did a single short seam, some days I did five. I will say that, initially, I thought I would make it into a curtain or shade for one of my sewing room windows. The low winter sun and Zoom events mean I have to diffuse the light coming in the room for part of the day. This would have been a very traditional use for the Pojagi. But it’s a big window! So partway through the month I switched plans and made it longer rather that wider, sealing its fate as a table runner (if I finished it.)

The first exposure I had to Pojagi was years ago from Victoria Gertenbach. Despite the time passing, it has always stuck in my head. She did machine work, but it was the history and the effect that stayed with me. For a hand stitched technique I used this tutorial. I won’t lie, I had to look at the tutorial each day for a week while I worked on it to have it make sense.

For materials and colour I stayed close to home. Many examples of Korean work will use different materials from silks to polyesters. I stuck with quilting cottons and linens, a mixture pulled from my stash. Included in this was a sparkly linen left behind when a friend from Australia visited, leftover blues from Shiver, and a scrap of fabric used to sop up dye when we tie dyed sheets with the kids last summer. My fabric pull was, in the end, an homage to a winter sunrise here.

I did actually finish this piece. It felt silly to leave it behind to be both forgotten and potentially wrecked. During downtime and while supervising virtual school this week I hemmed the edges. The tree is still up, candles light our evenings, and a lovely reminder to slow down graces the table.

As for Morning Make I am going to continue on the monthly change for 2021. I really liked the strong focus for a relatively short period of time. It is fostering play and exploration but still allows me to dig in to something new a little.

Rocky Road to Kansas With a Vibrant, Modern Twist

When you don’t have enough fabric to make a quilt you make pillows.

When you have an idea that won’t get out of your head you make something.

Back in September, when I was painting traditional quilt blocks fo Morning Make I painted one particular block: Rocky Road to Kansas. It’s quite a cool design. Even Barbara Brackman doesn’t say much about the block’s particular history, but it does have a long one. The block is seen in quilts nearly 130 years old, in variations more like a crazy quilt or a string quilt. It is definitely a block that can read extremely modern too. Like most quilt blocks, it all depends on the fabric you use.

In my case - once the idea borrowed itself in my creative consciousness - I went with a collection of hand dyed fabrics and some charcoal linen. The hand dyes came from two sources. The vibrant colours were a gift from my husband and daughter 5 years ago. At the culmination of a epic road trip to Whitehorse they came across a quilt store and shockingly, went in for me. They came across some vibrant fabric that was dyed by a local. Well, that local, it seems, now lives in Fiji so I think these tropical colours make a lot of sense now! The rest of the fabric was a collection of precious scraps from Debbie Aruda. I met Debbie teaching at The Workroom. Using natural dyes she was manipulating fabric in gorgeous ways and she gifted me with some. The combination of luminescent and subtle colours works so well together, I think.

To make the quilt block I drafted a freezer paper template. That way I could get nice, crisp lines and, hopefully, matching points. It was also useful as I was working with a limited supply of fabric. Each block is actually a four patch. Together they make a 24” square.

I probably had enough fabric to make a total of 10 corners. Of course, I could have augmented the blocks with other stash fabric too. At one point I entertained doing a whole deconstructed thing. You know, one block with 4 corners, one with 3, one with 2, and then just 1. That would have got me a decent size quilt. it would have also got me a quilt top that likely would have sat for years before being finished. So, pillows it is.

My husband actually hates decorative pillows on the bed and I hate laying in bed for anything other than sleep and well, sex. But these pillows are on the bed and they look pretty good there too. I guess they will be purely for show and I am not complaining one bit!

In March I played with making marks with watercolour. That led to further watercolour explorations. That led to sewing these blocks. This project is a perfect example of creativity begets creativity.