That is where the inspiration for this quilt came from. It is actually for a real bed, not just an aesthetic quilt but a very utilitarian one. It is for the master bedroom, with the slanted ceiling on one side of the room, it makes the room have a cozy-cottage like feeling. What better accent than a handmade quilt, in a traditional pattern!
While the cabin is a traditional log cabin, I did use many modern prints and a soft border for the logs. I am making it extra long on the sides because the bed is tall and I hate having a bedspread that is too short. I feel as if a queen size bed spread always needs about 5 more inches on either side! (A constant pet-peeve).
I still need to finish connecting the longer pieces, and add the back, and quilt the whole thing... geez! Makes it sound like I just started working on it! It is much closer to being finished now that the logs are done!
My cozy nook, where I often read. The light in this room is beautiful during the day, cool and soft in the morning, thankfully, so I can sleep a little longer sometimes, and very bright and warm in the afternoon. The color of the room changes all the time, grey is funny like that.
In college I never wanted to make many things that were utilitarian, I mostly focused on concept and aesthetics. As time passes and my life moves forward, I have become very interested in traditional textiles. Before I would be fascinated with what women made in the past, and the idea of women's work. I drew a lot of inspiration from it, and then would have quikly taken the tecnique or pattern and used it in way that hung beautifully in a gallery, but not a home. For a while now the home and what is in it, how it feels, the light in the rooms, the texture, the times spent in it, have become just as important as the concept of what I make to put in it.
It all goes back to the idea of the past and how it pertains to the future, how things, people, places, phases all come and go and how the memories that surround them are affected in our minds. I am coming to realize that what I used to make versus what I make now are related, but on such different scales in the art world and aesthetic world. I can still think, feel, see, and live in the world that makes me think and question all the time, but what I make has so much to do with process, time and living with it everyday now. Instead of having a closet packed with old work in bins, protected with tissue paper and soft pieces of cotton I live with what I make everyday and I share it with others.
Not to say that every once in a while I don't just make something out of pure concept and idea, I do, and still love that way of making, and thinking. However I am currently challenging myself to really reign my craft on traditional techniques, and revisit some of the way things were made in the past, especially for the home. I guess some of this comes out of having my own home, and the sense of growing and realizing that I am closer to what I want that I thought I was... Or maybe it has just changed and I am accepting that... I have a record of being my own worst critic! So I give myself a hard time when I decide that what I wanted for most of my adult life, has changed the past two years... Maybe the better way of looking at it is that what I wanted versus what I want is a growth on what I have always been drawn to. With experience, travels, and life I have figured some it out better, and I am sure as everything does.... It with morph and change again.
Thank you for sticking through this long post, that is starting to sound like a fragment of my brain. I hope to make it more clear someday and until then I will be finishing this log cabin!
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