Making Our Bed

We Make Our Bed, 2023. Machine pieced, hand and machine quilted, found fabric, 60"x60"

This piece may look vaguely familiar to you. It was part of my show, The Wild Braid, a few years back. It was an example of using arbitrary constraints - in this case, making a quilt using only a stack of well-used pillowcases donated to a thrift store but deemed too shabby to sell. They were headed for the bin, but a couple of the vintage patterns appealed to me (one was even a faux patchwork!) and I set myself an assignment.

Using an improv approach of random cut strips of cloth, I built up a log cabin structure, always starting with a piece of the orange print, and trying to use a piece each of all the fabrics in each square. I lightly machine quilted it, and thought I was done. I called it "Not Forsaken".

It went into storage after the show, and re-emerged a few weeks ago when I was asked to participate in a local exhibition of textile artists. I agreed, and was then informed of the theme: "Gabriola, Our Island Home". In this time of working towards reconciliation with the First Nations, the theme struck me as tone-deaf and colonial. I tried to back out, but was talked into staying by organizer of the show.

Of course, being the pot-stirrer that I am, I wanted to show something that might sit uneasily within the show. There wasn't time to make a new piece, but I did think back to this quilt, which was at least made from the detritus of Gabriola's waste stream, so there was a physical connection to the island. That very same day, I received in the mail a copy of Rebecca Solnit's new book, "Not Too Late." One of the quotes included was from David Graeber, the brilliant anthropologist and activist, one of the co-founders of the Occupy movement.

"The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently."

Bingo! How to make our world differently (and in a healthier, fairer, more sustainable way for all beings) is a crucial question today. A quilt, made from bits and pieces of cloth that are no longer considered good enough, but have been present for untold thousands of human dreams, have smoothed our rest, have witnessed love and illness, seems a suitable medium for such a message.

So I cut the letters of the quote from an old (of course) piece of pink linen and appliquéd them around the edge of the quilt. I felt that the squares themselves needed a little more love, and hand quilted them with #5 perle cotton. The quilting gave the piece more drape and integrity. It feels more complete now.

I notice that the pink of the letters is, optically, in complementary contrast to the green strip backing. This causes the text to fizz and become a little harder to read. The viewer has to work a little to take it in. I often employ this strategy in my work, trying to engage the viewer beyond the 2.5 nanoseconds that is usually taken in viewing art. Call me manipulative, but I hope the payoff of "getting it" is worth it.