Change

In recent emails between the group a couple of us have commented on the importance of contemplation time for this challenge. Certainly this quilt was formed out of a set of random thoughts which had been swirling about for some time which suddenly clarified at 2am in the morning whilst I was waiting for the networks to declare Ohio in the US elections so that I could go to bed. My first thought when the theme was announced was of the current economic climate - see this post. Then I thought about working with fractals but had decided that such a small quilt needed something simpler and had been pondering binary code. Then, I was watching the BBC coverage and looking at the ever changing map of red and blue states. Change of course, being Obama's catchword was ever repeated and suddenly I remembered a story Dennis told me years ago.

He was behind a middle-aged woman at a shop till, rather grumpily wondering what on earth was taking her so long to make her purchase. When finally she was done she turned around and said, "I'm sorry I was slow. I'm just learning to count money'. Dennis told me because he was so impressed that she would make the effort at that stage of her life and that she was not ashamed to tell him. Change is indeed possible and one change that was happening on election night was that young people and old people who had never voted before were learning the importance of standing up and being counted.

The maths in an election is quite simple but produces the posisbilty for complex changes.

This quilt is made from a base layer of fabric fused to Pelmet vilene and edged using a tutorial I found on Terry's site. Then there is a layer of painted Lutrador cut into two sets of horizontal strips and hinged at either side embellished with little parcels of plain Lutrador tied with Perle thread. Those 'beads' represent the 'ones' from binary code. You may think also of voting papers. Over that is a layer of blue painted Lutrador cut into vertical strips embellished with stitch and sewn on pennies. ( which may explain the mystery in this post) The pennies are literally small change and represent not only the 'nought's of binary code but also the fact that with the current economic climate we are all facing potential change in finances which may reduce us to dealing with smaller sums of money. Hopefully this quilt is a reminder that beautiful things can be made from insignificant things. If change means simplification it is not necesserily a bad thing.

On each layer I allowed the grids to be a little uneven - change is never easy to co-ordinate with ecah of us starting from a different position and moving at a different pace. The strips can be woven at will to create a changing display on the quilt top, reminiscent of the changing electoral maps.

I think it is interesting that the quilt actually looks much better with a mix of Republican red and Democrat blue than with just one layer.