'Unsuitable things'

Mr James was a stocky man, square of face and with a neat beard who taught me biology in my third year of secondary school. Or at least he stood by the blackboard and talked about biology whilst I squirmed on those uncomfortable , high wooden stools they put in labs and wished I was elsewhere. Biology was not my forte and I have not thought about Mr James since. Until that is I started to ponder my chocolate theme.

Almost at once I decided to do an applique interpretation of Quetzacoatl, the Mayan God who was said to have brough the cocoa bean to earth from heaven. I searched Google, found great images then, as if I was thirteen again my mind wandered and somehow I lost interest. Unable to shift from my preference for English Language as a subject I doodled a little spidergram of chocolate related words. Hot. Covered orange segments. Bitter. White. Teapot.

Teapot?

And suddenly I was thirteen again and Mr James was castigating something - his malfunctioning microscope, the ever leaking window, buck-toothed and buck-natured class member Chodder (never, ever known by his given name of Craig) - for being, in his favourite phrase, ' as usless as a chocolate teapot'. And thus was a quilt born.

Given its aetiology I thought that the quilt needed words. The Pillow Book of Sei Sonogon was at hand and I thought that she probably had a section about useless things. She didn't but she did have a piece about unsuitable things which was close enough. I retyped it then manipulated a photo of a Japanese teapot to make it melt. Stumped as how to combine the two via computer, I printed both, cut the teapot out, glued it over the words and scanned both onto fabric.

I then showed the quilt to my husband who looked blank. He had never heard of the phrase. But then he is Irish. Local humour and colloquialisms often pass him by. I showed a local friend. Blank. Chocolate I hinted. Penguin? She replied hesitantly.

Penguin?!

In fairness, in the UK we do have a chocolate biscuit called a Penguin. (A dirty lie, in fact - we have a chocolate flavoured biscuit. Not the same thing and why I never buy them.) But how do you get to that from a teapot? She pointed out the spout to me. Oh yeah. ( Although to me it looks more like a seal.) I thought about altering it but hey, art is for the viewer to interpret right? So I googled chocolate teapots. It is a perfectly legitimate phrase.

Mollified, and in homage to the simple elegance of tea ceremonies (or alternatively in homage to lack of imagination and laziness) I decided on simple framing. Japanese writing of course was a must. Only as I stood, rotary cutter in hand I realised that I didn't know which was was up. Being risk averse I decided not to gamble and risk being totally wrong. So the calligraphy fabric is used both ways up and I am happy with definately being only half wrong. Which is a lot less wrong than most of my biology homework used to be.