Following the Thread

Here are photos of the latest quilt that I have been working on. It isn't one of the ones I began at the retreat but rather one inspired by my friend Floris Flam who just came back from Quilt Surface Design Symposium (QSDS) in Columbus, Ohio. Floris goes every year for one of the two weeks on offer and takes one or two workshops with surface design experts, usually well-known fiber artists. When she gets back, she generously writes me about what she learned and describes exercises that she thinks I might be interested in trying. She also takes photos of the fibert art on exhibit during the symposium and shares them with me online once she gets them sorted and labeled. Aren't I lucky?

I was so inspired by her workshop descriptions that I decided to try my hand. It began with my needing some "inspiration" from a magazine photo or ad layout. Sunday evening I went through all the Historic Scotland and Scotland in Trust magazines, these from the two organizations we've belonged to that take care of Scotlands natural and historical sites. The photograph I decided to work with was of a man standing next to a modern-day standing stone with words carved into it. The composition of the piece was ideal as there were very few elements and the shapes were quite simple (except perhaps for the man).

The piece isn't finished yet as I need to add a shadow behind the man and I need to paint a white wash over the upper portion of the background (the sky) and perhaps some blue wash over the bottom portion (the sea). Right now there isn't enough definition between the two because I've used one piece of cloth which was hand-dyed by my friend Marion Barnett.

It wasn't until I began copying the lettering onto the quilt that I realized it had to do with Cromarty, a town of 600 folks on the Black Isle, north of Inverness. Then I tracked down the magazine I had torn the photo out of and read who the sculptor was and who was being honored. The man in the picture/quilt is Richard Kindersley, a letter carver/sculptor from London, with a Caithness stone he sculpted and lettered to commemorate the life of 19th-century Scottish stone mason, geologist, and writer, Hugh Miller. In 2004 the stone was "unveiled" as part of the celebration of Hugh Miller, who began his career in stone masonry in Cromarty.

Then I realized that my friend Sandy Thomson, who lives in Cromarty, was on the committee to plan and run the festivities. Today as I began to create my version of Richard Kindersley, the sculptor, I realized my lettering was anything but expert (after all, this was supposed to be simply an exercise), some of the letters that were missing on my version were hidden by Mr Kindersley's body in the photograph. Believe it or not, I have a book about Cromarty written by Hugh Miller as well as a history of Cromarty and environs written by a friend of Sandy's whom we've met. I pulled out both books and spent over an hour poring through, scanning each page for the quote, but to no avail. So I've just added letters that I think would be right.

Isn't it fascinating how these things happen, though? Connections of friends and places and interests and the blendings of history and art--a wondrous web.

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Here's a quick update on the house renovations: the brickies have finished making the bottoms to finish off the poles that hold up our verandah roof and the roof over the entryway. The concrete still needs to dry but the poles look so much better. The painters have been here all day, painting the hallway, staining the broom closet door in the kitchen, varnishing the door from the hallway to the dining area, and touching up a couple of things here and there. About an hour ago, we got word that the wallpaper has finally arrived so they'll be back tomorrow to put it up. We are so relieved!

Earlier today someone came to repair our wrought-iron driveway gate which had gotten bent upwards when the first skip got delivered. The delivery lorry tried to reverse up our drive to put the skip in the back but after "pruning" the apple tree, the lorry couldn't get even halfway up the drive, so he came back out and put the skip at the entrance to our drive by the road. It was when the lorry either came in or went out again that the gate got bent. It is fine now but we can't push it back (so that "The Rowans" sign shows) until Stewarts Building Supplies send someone out to pick up the remaining pallet of roof tiles which we can't use, can't store, and can't lift! (They will keep them as stock to sell if anyone needs them and will give us 50% of the profits. At this point, we would have paid that amount just to get rid of the *&^! things.)