Cutting Chaos

Some projects are difficult to date. They are such a long journey.

This quilt is technically my first art quilt because I started it first. Autobiography began much later but it happened much faster, so it crossed that finish line first and got posted first. Still, the evolution of this quilt was the broader context for that one. I say “evolution,” but that’s not quite the right word. It was a journey, but that word also doesn’t give any sense of the many layers there were to the conception, creation, completion of piece. I know it’s no masterwork — but it does mark an important pivot point for me both spiritually and artistically.

The seed for this piece germinated in my mind after my surgery and treatment for thyroid cancer in 2017. I spent a lot of time in those early recovery days resting and reflecting, blogging and browsing Pinterest for new quilt inspiration. Sometime around March or April of 2018 I stumbled across a quilter that was using a “sew-slash-sew” technique that I found fascinating. It looked so spontaneous and improvisational — I wanted to try it. At the same time, I was thinking about cancer, about how thankful I was for my surgeon and the quality of care I received, and about the spiritual metaphors embedded in the whole cancer experience.

My first thought was that I should make a little quilt piece as a thank you for my surgeon. At least … that was my honest intention when I pulled a stash of schweschwe out of my closets. I didn’t have a plan — just a technique that I only half understood from online browsing. I started cutting random sizes of fabric strips and sewing them together. I then cut them again diagonally and created these new triangles. Once I had the triangles, I started playing. How should they go back together? How COULD they go back together? I naturally gravitated towards a strong sense of contrast: reds/yellows versus blues/browns/greens. Also, I liked the contrast between a chaotic frame around an organized, unified center. I liked the three triangles together in a fan shape creating a sense of directional motion and light. I couldn’t say why in words. I just did.

Eventually, each of the slashed pieces found their place, and this center part of the top was together. That’s where it stayed for almost a year. I wasn’t sure what to do with the edges, and I was even less sure how to quilt it, so I tucked it away in my sewing closet.

At some point in the next year or so I pulled it back out and started thinking about a frame. Clearly it wasn’t a functional quilt. It would not be on any bed or pillow or couch. Its calling was to be a wall hanging. It therefore needed a sense of frame. But what? Given how little I had used the reds and yellows in the first part of the project, I had a lot of bright stripy blocks left over. I combined them with a solid navy blue I had lurking in my fabric stash and voila! A frame.

At this point, I was beginning to love it too much to give it away, and I felt torn about that. I was also beginning to recognize a deeper spiritual truth working itself into the piece and I wanted to let that keep growing and see what happened next. Plus, I still had no idea how I would quilt it. To this point, I had only ever quilted in straight lines and that just seemed wrong for this piece. But what other options were there? I put it away again.

Then I discovered free-motion quilting. I bought a new sewing machine and made the book-stack quilt for my nephew. I decided I loved free-motion but hated that particular machine, so I did more research and bought my Juki. That’s when I really started playing with free motion. Autobiography happened in a flurry, and I got in a whole lot of free-motion practice. The pandemic hit and I got even MORE free-motion practice. And all the personal things that happened along the way meant that I would be soon leaving South Africa.

That’s when I knew: time to finish this project. I needed to physically and figuratively close this chapter by quilting and binding this piece. I could not pack my sewing machine and leave South Africa without it done.

Once I started, the pattern was obvious: straight lines for the center light and tight pebbles for the chaos around it. Nothing in the navy blue and a straight, wide zigzag in the outer frame.

The project took almost three years start to finish. Seeing and feeling the spiritual truth that it represented took almost as long.

This world is dark and chaotic. Grief, pain, sin, evil are as insidiously embedded as cancer. Heaven is pulsing with beauty and joy. Between our chaos and heaven’s bright joy is a chasm we cannot cross. Darkness doesn’t move and cancer cannot cure itself. BUT heaven cuts in. The Great Physician — the one who is Light — the Three-in-One — can and does cross the chasm and change everything. God is the one who brings light to our darkness and order to our chaos.

That was my experience in the cancer journey. Both my voice (without my cancerous thyroid pressing down on it) and my heart (once heavy with grief) are freer now by the grace of God. This piece hangs on my wall to remind me of that every day.