Swamp Angel – Sings the Raven

I finished this one on a rainy day (rare occurrence here) and somehow it seems fitting, color-wise. And since there’s no sunshine today the photos are all taken indoors.

I thought I was being “clever” using that spotted black batik as the medallion, a bit of a FQ I’ve had for years but never knew where to put it. However after I’d put a few borders around it I wondered whether I made the right decision. Would I always regret starting a quilt with such a dark center? What kind of a statement was I making?

But then I remembered Mary Oliver’s quote – “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” — and I felt tiny bit justified.

I had the quilt lying on the floor (i.e. “design wall”) and when I stood back for some distance and perspective the center suddenly looked like a starlit sky through a window. Which brought to mind the memory of the incredible night we first arrived in Tansen, Nepal after a long, crowded, (and sometimes harrowing) bus journey from Kathmandu. The sky in Tansen was so full of stars I was almost overwhelmed with the brightness of it. I truly had never seen so many stars. Tansen is a small mountain town and thanks to very little electric light between the bazaar and the hospital guesthouse where we were headed, the night sky was literally glowing with starlight. It was shocking to me. But deeply inspiring as well.

So, instead of doing a lot of un-sewing to remove the center block to replace it with a different beginning “statement”, I kept going, keeping that vision in mind.

(Still, I wonder if I will always have a reservation or two.)

I think probably the most interesting event in creating these two Daylesford quilts was how often a certain strip of fabric was exactly the right length or width to fit my needs for a specific round, sometimes down to the exact half-inch. Or how often I had just the right amount of a shape, for example the first Sawtooth border needs 10 white HSTs and I had exactly that many cut, leftovers from another project and squirreled away in a baggie of other 2 1/2″ HSTs. Amazing! It was almost as if I wasn’t alone in my sewing room. And that reminded me of the same experience I had when I created my first Orphan Block quilt which included a little quilt block with the odd name of Swamp Angel. Perhaps the same angel showed up to help me with this quilt, too. In which case I am very grateful.

There’s not much more to say about this one except how satisfying it was to use up yet more more bits & pieces / odds & ends / leftovers & cast-offs. I just hope I didn’t go overboard in my use of shapes & colors,risking the creation of another “Clutterbuck Ganj” quilt… Seems I have a penchant for a little too much exuberance when it comes to color. For which I blame my childhood in India. I did manage to use up a goodly amount of my purples, but still have plenty left. Purples, anyone? I’d be thrilled to send the rest along to you.

I ordered wool batting for these two quilts which I’ve heard is a nice batting for hand-quilting. One expert hand-quilter I know called the experience of quilting with a wool batting, “like a knife through butter.” We shall see.

A few photos below. Notice the small piece of psychedelic daisies. !!! I was wrong last time about using my last Kaffe daisy! I was happy to unearth this scrap when digging through my box of greens. I didn’t want to cut the very last (I think!) remnant any smaller so unfortunately only one whole daisy can been; the rest are just peaking out of the seams.

This time toothless Mika decided to help with the last round. A first for her.

I am now ready to return Jen Kingwell’s book, Quilt Recipes, to the library, with thanks to her for this fun pattern.

Lately I’ve been worried about what my family will do with my fabric should I die before I can sew it all into something. And rooting around in my bins for other things, as I’ve written here before, I’ve come across many forgotten quilt blocks and patchwork pieces that I’ve discarded for any number of umpteen reasons.

After the last two scrappy “Clutterbluck Ganj” quilts I went into a mild funk and felt that if I never looked at another piece of fabric, if I never turned on the light in my sewing room again, I’d be happy. Relieved, almost. (In truth I think I’d fried my brain and it just needed time to recover.)

But I thought guiltily of all those bits and pieces of patchwork (some lovely, some not so) that I was starting to live in fear of ending up in a trash bag someday. A bit of panic set in. Help!

Then I remembered hearing discussion of and seeing photos in a FB group I belong to — What to do with your Orphan Blocks?! Several quilters had put their orphans (leftover blocks) together in a quilt and the results always seemed to satisfy, even though the blocks might be different color-ways and styles, or from different eras altogether. One member of the group challenged another, “Try it! You’ll be surprised!” Indeed, some quilts were pretty striking.

This seemed to be my solution. I could at least try. If I wasn’t completely tickled with the finished quilt, I could give it to charity. At least I would have kept some pieces from the landfill and assuaged my guilt.

I got them all out and spread them out on the guest bed, then set to work. I thought it might be harder than it was because organization is not my strong suit. But I was surprised how easily things came together and I began to have fun. It felt good to be out of my funk and quilting again. So far so good.

One of my orphans is a block named Swamp Angel. Strange name!

I knew why I had discarded it: it didn’t have enough light/dark contrast to really “see” the pattern. But I hadn’t wanted to throw it away because I’d put so much work into the points. So I wanted to be sure and include it somewhere in this quilt.

And as I worked I started to feel like there was Someone else guiding me and I recalled reading once that a famous African American quilter (maybe one of the Gees Bend community of quilters? I’m sorry I can’t remember her name) would enthusiastically proclaim that it was the Holy Spirit who helped her in her quilt-making. Could I dare to make the same claim? I appealed to my Swamp Angel and kept going, adding more random and disparate patchwork elements, happily watching the quilt grow on the floor.

I even incorporated a bandana that I had purchased years ago from a gift shop at a Ranger Station. Even though I love the birds, it’s the part that gave me the most trouble because of its irregular size. But I needed it there to balance the two gigantic stars. (What was I thinking when I made those?!) And I promised myself I would not make any new blocks, only use what I had and when, or if, absolutely necessary do a little patchwork to fill in spots.

Well, when the time came to sew the two halves together — the final seam before the dark borders — I ran into trouble, I admit. There was a fair amount of sighing, hand-wringing, Argh-ing and inward tears. My math hadn’t worked perfectly, sob, so I had to shave off a 1/2 inch here and 1/2 inch there. Which, in the world of patchwork, is a huge amount. Oh no! There went my “perfect” blocks! Sob! But Anne Lamott, of Bird by Bird fame, whispered to me again, “Perfectionism is a form of tyranny!” Thankfully I was able to resist the urge to dump it all again into the darkness of a storage bin in a fit of pique.

I persisted, though I do weep for the mutilated Log Cabin block … but I’ve learned that if I tell myself stories as I put together a quilt — especially when I am encountering problems, which happens often; I swear I could write a book called, How NOT to Make a Quilt! — I can rationalize my mistakes and errors well enough to finish a quilt and be emotionally and/or aesthetically satisfied with it.

So I told myself the story that the now-wonky Log Cabin was old and leaning like the tower of Pisa and that it was where the Swamp Angel lived! Whatever works, right?! As Joan Didion wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” How true.

Here’s a photo of my trusty quilt-holder standing in front of the door with the finished quilt, plus a few others.

Thank you, Swamp Angel. I am in your debt.