Blooming Quilt

Still working on the Take Two of the Provence fabrics quilt. Still.

I cut out a bunch of golden yellow squares, and had to piece one of them back together from the previous quilt. Red squares distributed--thanks to my friend Tracy, I had just the right kind and color.

I'd found another similar quilt online, and freaked out that mine might be considered a derivative of that one, so I reworked the borders to make it really mine. I probably shouldn't freak out, as I long ago realized that ofttimes there is a certain zeitgeist in the universe and creative and intellectual projects often overlap. Here's that quilt; it does look like we stared up at the ceiling in Lyon's Carolingan church and came away with the similar ideas.

My friend Tracy told me about an experience her sister had about someone apparently trying to claim a Dresden Plate idea as her own. It's about as silly as Pioneer Woman claiming Texas Sheet Cake for her own (in a post on my cooking blog). So what is new? What qualifies as something truly different and profoundly unique? Once I heard that if an idea was 10% new it was pretty "out there," and may not even be accepted by the public. Perhaps that's why retro designs appeal to us--they are new without being new.

Sewing is a slow process, as there is a lot of figuring out of which red square/black square goes where, and the drawing of the line, sewing, cutting, pressing, up-and-down, up-and-down. Another challenge for this quilt was that I was bound by my desire to only use the French fabrics, and there was just no running out to the little shop in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France to pick up something that would work better. (That's why Tracy's gift was so opportune.)

But the fun thing is "opening up" the reds around the yellow square.

I think the quilt looks like it's blooming, like a huge sunflower.