Christmas Day, 2021

Merry and Happy Christmas to all this day!  Today's post's photo shows a few of my own 'art quilt artist' creations "of the season."  While I am neither Catholic nor Orthodox, I have loved icons for many years.  Fifteen years ago I took an icon painting ["writing"] class and this was the result.  Eastern icons display a totally different perspective, so what looks off-kilter was meant to be.  

The Christmas stockings are pieced and quilted in a variety of fabric designs - holiday seasonal as well as non-holiday seasons.

My workroom is piled high with donation blankets and quilts that are ready to be dispersed this coming week.  My dream goal is to use every bit of my fabric stash before I have to "retire" from sewing and quilting altogether.  Hopefully, I have at least one more decade for creating items that might be of use to others who don't have the means to create them for themselves.

I hope everyone reading this post is safe and warm and healthy and will remain that way into the indefinite future.

Merry Christmas!  

Requiem

 

Requiem 

This week I have been floating in the memories of past decades, several not so distant.  The photo of this fabric 'stained glass' Rose Window came to mind.  I designed it in the mid-2000s, and it was created  by the Banner Team of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle.  It's made of thousands of small pieces of multi-colored fabrics, hanging about five feet in diameter.  It is displayed from time to time in the UPC Narthex, preparing the way to the real stained glass glory installed inside the Sanctuary.  

I love Rose Windows.  I have sat for hours in majestic cathedrals during my working and traveling years in Europe - infused in the fractured, colored light that enters those hallowed spaces through exquisite stained glass windows.  Often, I would also be a silent audience of one during the rehearsals of cathedral choirs - bathed in the mystery of ancient choral repertoires.   

My favorite, soul-healing choral music pieces are the requiems composed by Morten Lauridsen, John Rutter, Faure, and more.  I have sung the first three composers' pieces, plus the choral motet "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen.

Such diaphanous, ethereal music offers healing medicine beyond what can be dispensed in any earthly world I've experienced.      

   Today is a special day in the memories of most living Americans:  9/11/2001.  Twenty years ago today, the television views of the tragedy in New York City captivated us and stopped us in our tracks, breaking our hearts.  

   Today, 9/11/2021, our world is still torn asunder by such wartime tragedies along with the covid pandemic.  It's the wartime tragedies I am especially reminded of today.  My photograph displays three quilts that I have recently completed.  They [and at least several more] are destined to be handed soon to the Pacific Northwest coordinator for Quilts Beyond Borders.  The quilts plus many more created by hundreds of other helping hands will be given to  Afghan families, newly-arrived in Washington state and many other states, whom war has displaced.  

   These Afghanis are now refugees here in King County and other counties across our nation.  They come with only the clothes on their backs, in many instances.  So, quilts made in love and  welcome and friendship will soon gifted to many of them, along with the basics to begin a whole new life in a new land.  

   The African animals, portrayed in the fabric of one of my quilts, are depicted during a 'great migration', which, although not by their choice, is what has brought the Afghan families to America to begin a new existence.

   Standing in New York City's harbor is our Statue of Liberty.  On its pedestal is inscribed the following sonnet, welcoming refugees and immigrants of many generations, from lands near and far.  Its words are meant for all new arrivals on both coasts and through all borders of our country.    

Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of

Your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless,

tempest-tossed to me:

I lift my lamp beside

the golden door.

 -          Emma Lazarus

-          Written in 1883  

   

 July 2, 2021                   The American Cemetery @ Omaha Beach, France

        On July 4th, the USA will celebrate our Independence Day, when we separated from the British Empire in 1776.  However, we're not celebrating our independence from helping other countries keep their own independence.  We have come to Britain and France and many other countries' assistance in times of war and oppression.  Land of the free, home of the brave.  But not all are free, even in America.  We who can, need to do our utmost to ensure all who live here can feel free and brave.  Lots of work to be done to make that happen.

        I took the photo above during a special trip to Germany, the Netherlands, and France some years ago.  My son and I took his teenage son to see several WWII battle sites and cities that have captivated the imagination of so many of my grandson's generation.  Visiting the city of Berlin and the expanse of Omaha beach were particularly moving experiences.        

          This is the closest I have come to making a 'traditional' red/white/blue quilt in honor of our country.  Different from many quilts I have completed [this one in 2013], it represents some of the patriotism I felt as an American, as a quilt artist.  Like most of my quilts, it was donated - and I trust it is still keeping someone warm when warmth is needed. 

        July 4th, 2021 will dawn in a much different world from the one in which this quilt was created.  The covid virus has changed our culture and that of most countries around the world.  The USA is trying to 're-open' after being shut down in varying degrees for the better part of 15 months.  I trust that some day soon we will find the freedom to live openly and safely once again - each one of us. 

  March 7, 2021  

    This Oregon beach was a wonderful happy place each summer for Lucy [left] and Ellis - Leonbergers who changed our family's lives.  Both are now 'angels' - and deeply missed and loved by us all.  They lived with their humans [my daughter, Lise, and her hubby, Paul], always loving and enjoying hours of swimming and chasing balls and eating a bit of pizza crust every Friday night.  They live on in our hearts.

    Following a detour due to medical issues, I'm slowly returning to quilting, sewing, and art-making.  2021 appears to be a year of potential promise and longed-for family reunions as we become eligible for vaccines and evolving immunities. 

    Every day is a gift.    

 January 30, 2021

     Having spent the past four months working through five different health issues, two hospitalizations, and four or five different antibiotics, I have been derelict in my blogging duties.  I also have been away from my sewing and quilting machines that entire time.  Two days ago, I laid out two equal-sized pieces of  fleece with which I intend to start sewing another double blanket, child-size, for South Dakota,.  

    It's time to move back into life and look into the future.  I'm hoping to receive my first covid-19 vaccination in a few weeks and the second not long after that.  Then comes the 'two week' waiting period after which I will relax a bit from the worry about becoming seriously ill with covid-19.  I've had enough of 'serious' illness for now.  I'm ready for creative activities.  

   The view photo above was taken six and a half years ago, when I took my then-eleven year old grandson to Victoria, BC to view the Viking exhibition at a large museum there.  We enjoyed a circle-island bus tour, and this view looked across  the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Vancouver Island to Washington state's Olympic mountains.  It was a 'back to the future' moment.  I love remembering being drawn into the promise of the return journey to come, and years to enjoy other road-trips together with him.

   Covid-19 has kept me almost totally in self-isolation since this past March.  Outside of the unknown  of the disease itself and how it might affect a person of my age, I have enjoyed the time removed from public view.  I have not enjoyed the separation from family and friends.  Hopefully, that will be gone in the not too distant future.