Life Journeys

Our lives are in constant flow along winding pathways. At different times, we all travel through gardens and ghettos, under rainbows and through ruins. If we are lucky, we have good friends and close family members to share the wonder and the struggles, to help us over the rocks and across the streams, to sing and play music and laugh with us as we go.

I spent the past weekend at a quilt retreat, in the company of friends, old and new. All around me, artists created tangible reminders of life's milestones: quilts for weddings, birthdays, new and eagerly expected babies. There were quilts to celebrate friendship and those built with fragments of work begun by friends who have passed on; there were quilts designed to honour different times in history and different cultures around the world, designs inspired by other artists and by our own life experiences. There were projects made to be put to daily use, and those made to be admired. There were quilts made to stimulate the eyes of those who appreciate beauty and those deliberately made "not too pretty" in order to be more effective in stimulating minds that have begun to wander. There were innovative quilts engineered by individuals exploring new methods, and those created in community using traditional techniques. And as always, I came home inspired and full of new ideas.

My weekend was mostly spent machine quilting an Underground Railroad quilt begun in a long-ago class taught by a friend, modified and continued in response to a guild challenge for a "soldier quilt" (or bedrunner) to mark the anniversary of the war of 1812; obviously, I missed that deadline! (more about project background here).

My challenge this weekend was to decide on an appropriate design for the quilting. I had already decided that this quilt should reflect an endless cycle of journeying through life, so decided on a winding and repetitive variation of the infinity symbol with echo quilting for the "pathways" of the quilt, and simple straight lines in alternating directions for the rest of the quilt. The overall pattern reminds me of crossroads and of the flow of time... and like real life, the final result is definitely not perfect.... so I think it works on all kinds of levels! :)