Fabric Therapy

In late May, One Sunflower wrote a post about using fabrics to stimulate ideas. Her inspiring post gave me the idea to write about my mom's sewing room. 

My mom's sewing room is a safe haven. Ideas happen there. Last week when I visited my mother, we hung out in her sewing room and pawed through her fabric. She didn't say much when I grabbed my camera and began snapping pictures of her drawers of color-themed quarter-of-a-yard slices of cotton. She conferred with me. Mostly simple questions like, "What are you going to do with the pictures?" or "What are you going to make?" I could feel her looking at me with both curiosity and trust. As I continued taking the pictures, I began to like the way the natural arrangement of the swatches filled the square space of the camera screen. On the drive home, I wondered what it might look like if I arranged the photos like quilt blocks.

Once I walked in the door, my kids and husband quickly began firing questions and demands requests  at me. My photo quilt would have to wait. I did manage to scribble a few notes before starting dinner. With dishes done and litter boxes emptied, I began the delicious process of edited and playing with the photos to create the quilts. I vaguely remember hearing my husband someone complaining, "Geez, she is at the computer agaaaaaaaainn!" I didn't let the heckler deter me. I was in the zone. My revising didn't feel tedious. It just felt like I was following an idea.