That very last minute – part 2

The South Korean and the German Patchwork Guilds are preparing for a joint exhibition with 30 quilts from 15 quilters each from these two countries on the theme/topic of the “divided country”. It was initiated from the Korean Guild and a bit over-intellectual about the sizes that the quilts were allowed to have – Germany’s quilts either 89 cm square or 90 cm square, depending on the reading of when the division of Germany ended, and no real size restrictions for Korea because right now nobody knows when Korea’s division will end. The German quilts will be displayed at the German Guild’s Patchworktage in June, then travel to Korea for a joint exhibition of both countries, and we are hoping that more venues will be found where both collections can be shown together. 

I had been invited to be one of the 15 people to contribute a quilt, and I had been thrilled to do so. In the beginning. 

My family is a family who was divided by the ‘iron curtain’, my aunt lived in the eastern part of Germany. My entire childhood is full of memories of my mother sending packages to the East, either her sister, or other friends. Coffee, textiles, no printed media, no western style music.  In appreciation we would get gifts of stationary with flower motifs which we hated, sometimes sheet music, classical records, sometimes books. Visiting my aunt was difficult because you had to get a permit, she was only allowed to come and visit once, when my grandparents were celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary, but she had to come alone, her husband did not get permission. And many other stories like that.

So I thought I had a lot to say on this topic, but – as it turns out, when one is too emotionally involved, it is mighty hard to come up with a good quilt on that topic. The deadline was drawing nearer and nearer and still I had no real clue as to what to do. My aunt passed away a couple of years ago, otherwise we might have been able to make something together, she, too, was an avid textiler.

Something on the Green Belt (German explanation, English explanation), that area which was the zone around the border fortifications? After 40 years of little traffic or activity in that area it has since turned into a natural protected zone. 

Picture taken from here

But nothing came to my mind that I could turn into a quilt. (And today I saw on social media that Heidi Drahota, another of the 15 invited artists, used the Green Belt, so I am glad I did not stick with that.)

 

Finally I had the idea that I would put together a few handprinted fabrics of mine in a kind of earth-tone-mixture, 

and underlay that with a spiral in the colors of the German flags (both, East- and West-Germany had the some colors black-red-goldenyellow for their flags) to symbolize the way that the countries were intertwined, but also the confusion that the division created.

And I knew that I wanted to do something with the outline of the state/s, in reflector fabric, of which I still had a decent sized piece.

When I finished the ‘German flag colors’-fabric from which I would have taken the spiral, I realized that it looked a bit like a flag itself, though ‘turned around’. 

Despite the fact that flags have a front and a back and both of them are seen equally, printed representations of state flags always show an orientation where the pattern part is in the left upper corner. After sleeping one night about this I decided to dump the spiral idea and simply take the ‘flag’ as top layer.

I cut the outline of re-unified Germany from the reflector fabric, which was easy enough. Getting it onto the foundation was hellishly difficult and took a long time, almost as long as the separation itself, that’s what it felt like when I was trying to pin it down. And even then it wasn’t quite exact, when sewing, I had to make a few adjustments. But I got it done.

Adding at the top because despite repeated measurements taken, suddenly
the size was not correct anymore, not even when you make allowance for
89  or 90 cms.

My good friend Kathy Loomis criticized the idea of quilting words with a connection to spearation and reunification over it all, suggesting that would take too much attention away from th visual design. I am glad I heeded her advice because I would never have been able to finish in time if I had then started quilting text onto it all.

Quilting in relatively straight and parallel lines, not in the vertical, but horizontally. And then the problems started – and I am not going to go into them in any kind of detail. I had meant to finish the piece last week Monday, but despite the fact that I kept working on it every day after coming home from school it was Friday before I finally snipped the last thread. 

The former border is marked by red herringbone stitch. No political intention
related to the red - it just seemed slightly less obvious in this color context than
either black or yellow would have been.

Never before have I sent off a quilt so quickly after it was finished – a mere 40 minutes between that last thread and my trip to the post office. It is called "Wächst jetzt zusammen, was zusammen gehört?" ("are they now growing together as they belong together?"), which is a citation of a statement by Willy Brandt about the two Germanys, but put into a question format (here is a reconstruction of how that 'citation' came about - obviously he never really said that, and definitely not at the foot of the wall, as it is being narrated. Today we call that fake news). Frequently, even more than 25 years after reunification, we can still find instances where East and West have not yet adapted to each other. Division was severe, and it won't be that much longer now until reunification has lasted as long as the separation itself did. And only a few months before the Wall came down I still thought I would never live to see that in my lifetime!

I don’t credit myself for this wise saying, but “if it weren’t for the very last minute, a lot of things would never get done” surely is a very important statement.

And then despite the fact that I am worried about climate change etc. I boarded a plane on Saturday to go on vacation for a few days after finishing (and passing) my probation period in the training. I could write more about how far we might have entered into the very last minute before everything is too late in that respect, and yes, flying is not a climate-friendly way to travel… but I wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny and near a beach, and there are not that many options for doing that when starting from Germany in the end of March.

Mojo?

It had been a while since I had been visited by the quilting mojo. That is certainly partly due to the fact that working and studying full time requires a different kind of time management, and there is a family, too, that asks for and needs to be given attention, and household chores and and and... Amongst all that it is difficult to find time to even start giving though to quilting ideas, and then those need to brew, but when too many things are going on that kind of silent simmering can't go on because the burner gets pushced too far into the back corner. No oxygen will get to it there.
Another factor that influences this situation, however, I attribute to the fact that my recent quilts had got to be rather political in their statements about refugees, human rights, etc. Although I feel very strongly about these issues, and these messages - and I would never want to miss the quilts that emerged from that - the political situation here has become so frustrating and disappointing that I might wonder what use there is in stitching messages like that on textiles. Twice within a year hopes for improvements in politics after an election were thwarted. Pre-election promises were null and void after the election, or, worse, the coalition that would have been necessary to initiate changes did not happen. So my personal frustration has grown tremendously, my political messages would now get too complicated or too outspoken. No use putting that on textiles, as it contradicts my own definition of how a viewer should be able to see a piece of art, or perceive a message. Namely: not too blatantly. The viewer must be able to fill a piece of art with a meaning that might be very different from my own, I must not run around with a flagpole and drive my intention into their heads with force and without alternative.
So similarly as at the point when I made number XXXIX in the Play of Lines series and when the line designs had become too difficult and complicated, my series text messages might be either at its end, or it must find a reorientation of which I don't know at the moment where it will go. If it ever comes.
But I was happily scrapping away. On all levels. A bit of scrappy sewing on the side while my workshop students did not need me.

Small scale Underground Railroad blocks from leftovers from my
hand-dyed fabrics.

Knitting socks with partly leftover yarns...

... and knitting a blanket with the smallest left-overs from sock knitting that won't last far
in socks even.

On a more serious side, I was trying to make something for a wonderful inspirational challenge by Claire Passmore with the 12 by the Dozen group, when she set Shamia Hassani as the inspiration for the February reveal. But as I stated on their blog - I had an idea, I came up with a bit of a design, and then time failed me and it has not been executed yet. (It might, in a larger scale than the 40 x 40 cm, but that will have to wait.) And I was struggling with a piece I had been invited to for a joint German - South Korean exhibition on the condition of partitioned countries. When I first received the inviation I was thrilled - it is a life story of mine, with a family that was split up East and West, a grandfather who fled from the Russian occupied zone in the early fifties, to be reunited with his wife and two of the three daughters after the East German uprising in 1953. But the topic turned out very personal, I could not get going. So I labored, thought I would do something with 'Germany' as a layover and an inset spiral from Germany's flag colors or so and put the two different layers together, and then the outlines of the country over it in reflecting fabric. (Now that I write it here, it is sooo obvious that there would have been too many layers of meaning, but at that point I did not see that.)

This would have been the ground area of Germany, representing
the partition of forty years.

Left over from an exercise in a Nancy Crow workshop long
ago, a piece in red and black could easily be turned into a
German colors piece by adding some 'golden' yellow.

All of it hard going, and not very convincing to myself even. How was this going to turn into a good quilt? Then I had put the spiral-to-be part together and was going to send a photo to Kathy Loomis and realized that the fabric that was supposed to be the inset spiral really looked like a flag by itself, at least a bit.

I chucked the spiral idea and for the first time in a long while had a bit of exhilaration about my quilting. Even would have preferred to stay home and work on it rather than going to my studies, but that was not possible.
I cut the outlines. That was relatively easy.

But this thing, cut from a flat piece of reflecting fabric, is everything but flat when you are trying to put it onto another flat piece of fabric.

It rather misbehaves and I am making a fool of myself as I am working on attaching these two to each other. Process is slow, and time is running fast. But it feels good to have something going on in that mojo part of working with textiles. We will see where it goes.

Flag of the Free

One thing that always amazes me when I am in the US is the omnipresence of the American Flag. In Germany it had until recently not been very popular to be sporting the flag, and although it is slowly changing, especially in the context of sports events (i.e. soccer) people still don't fly the flag in front of their house. Add to that speaking with Kathy Loomis about what brought her to start working on her fantastic flag quilts that I got to see when visiting with her recently. And suddenly I began to notice variations of American flags as well. Not only the huge ones flying in front of official buildings and besides highway exits.

Percey Lam: Journey, HI (in Form, not Function)

sorry - did not take the maker's name...seen at Kentucky State Fair

 

And I didn't even take a picture of every variation that I saw. Perhaps I should have. Next time...