Fiber is integral to my life, even beyond the tactile pleasure.  Whether I'm thinking or writing about the threads of existence, or making visual notes about such,  fibers are the invisible threads that weave community into a plaited splendor.  This morning while on Face Book, the Surface Design Association asked this question:

Surface Design Association

Dictionary.com defines fiber as a fine thread like peice {sic} orfilament/finalments collectively. How does this definition fit intoyour work as an artist or surface designer?

(My opening paragraph here was in response to that question.)

This past Sunday, 24 January 2010, was an auspicious day.   For what seems to be years, I've been saying, "I want to make a quilt" and have tired out my friends, hearing this vocal refrain, time and again.  Well, Sunday I re-connected with the quilter in my heart, and am now making a quilt.  There is much behind this story, but it begins in my Winter Room at La Lolet. 


Sunday mornings are sacred times for me, and are filled with ritual.  I get up early, brew my own blend of java, pour 1/2 n 1/2 in a special pitcher I use only on Sunday mornings, go into the Winter Room, java in hand and either read or write.  This past Sunday I did both.  When I started going through a sketch book, I ran across a note about quilts that gave rise to this question:  "where is that..." and I went to the studio in search.  After a couple hours of going through 'stuff' that was tucked in cupboards in the studio, my kitchen island was covered with mounds of fabric and projects unfinished.



I sorted and found strips of fabrics I'd sewn together to make what?  I couldn't remember.   But then I spotted a reference to a eucalyptus leaf, and it all came back to me.  In Napa, there was a grove of eucalyptus trees amid which I would roam, enjoying the dappled shade on hot days and the smell of the oils from the pods.  This patchwork rendition is the landscape of that memory.  This quilt, which I had begun and never finished, had been rolled away in a cupboard, for years.


Then I came upon a quilt block I had made in a class taught by Jeanette Reynolds in March of 1997 when I was a member of the Napa Valley Quilters.  The class was called "Mystery Quilt" and the block design was called "Friendship Quilt." 
This is the quilt block that I had sewn together in Jeanette's workshop.   I am now making a quilt.



So far, I have 5 blocks sewn together, and 5 blocks laid out.  This is a view with the quilt patchwork laid out on the kitchen island.



I'm in love with the process of making fiber art. 

There were invisible threads tugging at my heart last Sunday morning.  It was an auspicious day.