I think I (sort of) hate this quilt.

This past August I was invited to join the ‘Voyage’ International Textile Artists Group and immediately said yes. As with joining the 20 Perspectives, my aim was to boost my creativity, have something to work towards, giving me some kind of anchorage in this terrible year 2024, hoping, it would all turn out for the better.

At first, I had said I would most likely not be able to contribute to the group’s upcoming exhibition at BMO ’25, thinking it would prove to be too much stress to whip out a quilt in the short amount of time I would have once we finished our move. Especially as the topic ‘alchemy’ didn’t exactly cause a flood of ideas that asked to be put into a quilt.

When we started unpacking all our boxes in the new apartment, however, the first thing I put on the design wall was a conglomeration of fabrics with a special meaning, because I had come up with an idea after all. Searching the internet for a definition led me, of course, to Wikipedia, and the German page defines the term ‘alchemy’ as „die Lehre von den Eigenschaften der Stoffe und ihren Reaktionen“, i.e. the doctrine of the characteristics of elements/materials and their reactions with each other. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemie)

The German noun “Stoffe”, however, also means ‘fabrics’, which gave me a short cut for my interpretation. Fabrics have a relationship and some kind of reaction when they are put next to each other, especially when sewn together, and when special fabrics are joined, the alchemy between them takes off. I decided to pair some of my special fabrics that were all waiting to be used: rust dyed fabric pieces I had brought home from my trip to South Africa, an indigo dyed scarf, the kimono from my collage project with Kathleen Loomis. I discovered that the pattern on the indigo dyed scarf, which I liked in its design but didn’t wear much because it felt too narrow, was off-set a bit when folded in half: the patterns don’t exactly match. Which I really like a lot.

 

The rust-dyed pieces came home with me from South Africa, and I love them for their coloring, intensity of pattern, and, of course, because they remind me of the trip to Krueger Park and the quilt festival at Johannesburg.

 

Alchemy, in my understanding for this quilt, is not only restricted to the interaction of chemical elements, but I am extending it to fabrics, when placed next to each other. Putting it all together felt good, and after a bit of turning and changing I liked to layout, too.

First attempt - but it got turned around.

 

However, as I had noticed before in another context, but completely forgotten, the rusted fabrics from South Africa are so tightly woven that they are VERY difficult to sew, which was the reason why I had not used these particular fabrics up yet. Sewing them was hard for the machine, and quilting over them caused multiple thread breakages, disruptions in the quilting process and unpleasant loops on the backside. I was indeed getting to the point where I could have thrown this piece out of the window!

 

Deciding on a quilting design then proved another challenge. Yet when I started reading former chancellor Angela Merkel’s memoir that was published recently, and read the section on her most famous (or infamous) statement throughout the 16 years of her chancellorship, I thought it would be interesting to add another layer of alchemy. The quote is from 2016, when Germany was facing the massive influx of more than one million Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country, and quite a few other refugees from several other countries. Chancellor Merkel said that Germany had faced so many difficult situations and overcome them, and that we would be able to deal with and overcome this challenge as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDQki0MMFh4

Interestingly enough, her full statement was hardly ever quoted, but reduced to the three-word-phrase ‘we will manage’. Events following this massive influx of refugees had and still have quite an alchemic-like effect on German society, which I myself felt vividly while I was trying to accompany refugees through the maze of German administration, rules and regulations, giving them guidance for everyday life in a country that is rather different from their own. For this quilt on alchemy I decided to put as much of the quote onto the quilt surface as would fit, and except for a few last words, most of it is on there.

 

Yes, I hated the quilting because of the difficulties with the densely woven fabric. No, I don’t think it is one of my strongest quilts. But it is giving a platform for some of my favorite fabrics, and it includes a statement for which I still admire our former chancellor. At this particular moment it is still not clear whether we have indeed managed to deal with the crisis, our current political situation is partly due to that refugee crisis (combined with problems going back to German reunification, and probably even further back). And in the end I don’t really hate this quilt. But it made a good title for this post (which I started some time in December and am only now finding time to finish).

 

Addendum: This quilt will be on display together with the other Voyage quilts in the collection "Alchemy" at the Scottish Quilt Show in Glasgow in March and at the Brno Patchwork Meeting in April.

New Job.

It’s been 4 weeks since I started my new job, and it has been a rollercoaster for sure. All the things I learned during the past three years have simple receded into the background as a kind of white noise. Good to have as a backdrop, but not what I need for daily activities in the operating room. I need to understand the structure of procedures, learn where to find materials of all different kinds – and get a feeling for the team dynamics going on amongst a group of more than twenty nurses, the anaesthesiology team, and the doctors around them. I think the latter part of the challenge is the hardest. After two weeks the head nurse told me she was expecting me to be able to be the stand-by (without supervision) for a thyroid operation by Christmas – at that point that statement resulted in a slight feeling of panic on my side, but two days ago, on my four-week-anniversary, I thought, yes, that is definitely going to be possible.

Sometimes I get the feeling that some colleagues think I am not learning fast enough, at least their way of telling me things is not encouraging but a bit debasive, or even impatient. Some others are patient and friendly, though, so with a bit of self-empowering I think I am doing alright. However, on Friday I actually had to sit down after a morning encounter with one colleague (whom some call ‘the dragon’) and give myself a bit of a pep-talk: "It’s only been four weeks! and I am doing pretty well for that! I have learned a lot, I have understood a lot! It is a very complex field! I am doing fine, given all the circumstances!"

I don’t think it could have been much faster considering the mode of explanation and instruction, as it is all ‘learning on the job’ during a fully functioning operations schedule. I do have a mentor, but she is not there every time I am there, and after the first few days she has been assigned to a different operating room more often than not. There are many different ways of following the procedures, and every nurse has her/his own standard – and many different instructors make for a slightly longer time of figuring out exactly how my personal standard will be. Every once in a while I get to take home a bottle of distilled water that hasn’t been used up and that would have been thrown out otherwise. I will never have to buy distilled water for my iron again.

 

Only the fact that these plastic bottles will be on my mind after
using up the water... but I am using up the water, not just
dumping it down the drain and the bottle would be thrown
away then, too. Any suggestions for this dilemma, anyone?

As I am observing interactions between team members, trying to figure out characters and alliances, I am trying to keep a low profile. I want to work there, work well, and get along with everybody to such a degree that they consider me a reliable, trustworthy and – eventually, hopefully – competent part of the team.

When the operation is on, there can be times when not much is required of me. I watch, try to figure out the routine of instrument handling – and think of knitting patterns or yarn combinations. (That’s easier than quilt options.) A number of blog posts have been composed in my head, but never got written down, because when I come home I am exhausted. So not a whole lot of stitching has been going on. But I think I am getting to the point where I can give myself a certain routine at home after work, and will get back to stitching again. After all, some interesting developments are going on that I will be able to talk about in a little while. Right now I can say that I am making plans for a piece on the theme ‘bridge’, and I am planning to use some of the kimono fabric that I received from Kathy Loomis a few years ago. I even realized that I will make use of a piece I had begun but obviously never finished.

 

There is still a good sized piece of the (half) kimono
left. I can make several pieces with this...

Always good not to let anything go to waste!