Thursday, January 20, 2011

Surrender to Slow

"How is your Bordeaux coming?" My daughter asks. "Do you mean Bargello?" "Oh, right, bordeaux is a chocolate?" If it were chocolate I was working with I think that I would have taken care of it in no time flat! Bargello, on the other hand, is like a slow motion dance. Particularly since I have decided to create a merging undulation. Many painstaking cuts, unsewing, resewing. But ever so slowly the pattern emerges and I find myself slowing down, no longer resisting the timing. I accept the need to cut yet another strip to make a new series of strips as I gently urge the fabrics to wave in more complexity than a single line of strips would do. The length of pieced top I can create is measured in inches every day as I work on the panel bit by bit fitting it in with my other work. I am encouraged by what is emerging!

I thought I would go crazy when I realized what I had committed to with this panel. I resisted the minute care each strip took in order to urge my design along. My dear friend sat in the room one day realizing for the first time how sometimes creating beautiful art is simply a matter of showing up and doing the next little repetitive thing. I now appreciate the way process quilting works in slow motion. My usual way is to move at a much faster pace. Easier piecing methods, fusing instead of sewing, long arm sewing machine help. But this Bargello pattern is the antidote to hurry, allowing me to take pleasure in the way that sometimes good things take a long time to develop!

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