Quilts, metaphors, and Log Cabins.
The Log Cabin is one of the most recognized quilt blocks. We know what to expect with Log Cabin quilts. We know that the block represents home, stability. We know the patterns we can create using this versatile block. We know how to put scraps together to maximize creative effect using value. There’s order, and symmetry, but when I pulled out the pieces to start working on this quilt again, I was feeling anything but order. In fact, I wanted to speak to the uncertainty of the last few years.
We have all experienced chaos, trauma and some sort of upheaval since Covid pandemic interrupted our lives in 2020. At times, life has been anything but certain and stable. So why Log Cabins? We know what to expect when we make these blocks and place them into a quilt. We know what our lives should look like so what happens when our lives take a turn? What happens when the blocks aren’t arranged in an easily recognizable pattern? When life is sort of back to normal but not quite. When the blocks and the patterns sort of create a pattern we know and understand but then twist and turn so it’s not the same patterns we know and love. Things make a little sense but they aren’t normal as our lives creep back to what we once knew. This quilt pattern speaks to normal and traditional, but the layout is anything but normal and traditional. The foundation of our lives were supposed to look one way but they didn’t, and the blocks should look one way, but they don’t. Organized chaos as we look for a way to make sense of it all.
While I was piecing this quilt I was contemplating something a friend said to me several weeks ago: that I can speak up and speak my truth, however unpopular or sharp, and that I offset it because I put beauty into the world with my quilts. Both things can be true.
Metaphors abound. Speak your truth. Create beauty. Be unequivocally true to yourself and others.