Chasing Lightning Bugs Studio Blog

gray days have been our stage this week.  rain and cold.  even ice thickly layering the trees.  and when the temperatures rose a little, the sidewalks and yard were covered in little icy troughs as they began to melt and break away from the branches.  april has been so wintry that ezra and i kept long hours at the studio the past few days, with little interest in cold damp wanderings.

i made my first little batch of 'poetry quilts' this week.  the subtlety of stitch and word is very striking.  the fabric is a plain unbleached, toothy muslin that carries the word to your eye unadulterated with color or pattern.  these have been planted in my mind for months, swimming around in there, waiting for the right time to emerge.  and the other day, i had finished quilting all the tops i'd made last week and decided to try my hand at writing.  so i found a lovely little robert frost poem, 'beech'.  and started writing with my sewing machine...

Where my imaginary line

Bends square in woods, an iron spine

And pile of real rocks have been founded.

And off this corner in the wild,

Where these are driven in and piled,

One tree, by being deeply wounded,

Has been impressed as Witness Tree

And made commit to memory

My proof of being not unbounded.

This truth’s established and borne out,

Though circumstanced with dark and doubt—

Though by a world of doubt surrounded.

and the poetry quilt was born.  yesterday, 2 rilke poems, 'piano practice' and 'the apple orchard' became quilts.  lightweight and breezy.  today my job is to photograph them and list them on etsy.  photographing the subtle tone on tone texture that creates the words is difficult. it requires an exact light that i haven't quite figured out yet.  but i'll figure it out!