Calamity Kim

Before & After

Before & After, originally uploaded by calamity kim.

The transformation is remarkable.
Like a day spent at a salon, changing from plain Jane to elaborate embroidery princess, this shows what 24 days spent adding stitches can do.
I did add more fabric to the edges to cover the batting and add some more color and to frame it.
It has become thick and heavy with stitches creating texture and dimension where it once was flat and empty.
I had dug through my stash of fabrics and thought I was choosing elegant silks, burn-out velvet, linen and cottons that would be reminders of old fashioned crazy quilts and after the embellishments they have become something else all together.

Button hole stitches in circles...

A cacophony of threads and fabrics juxtaposed to make your eyes look and your fingers touch...

A few more stitches wait on my needle...

maybe...it might be almost finished.
Watch the slideshow here to see the transformation

What If?

What if I have fallen in love with this freedom of stitching? Thank you Jude.

What if I am smitten by letting my needle wander the cloth at will?

What if I grow as a hand stitcher and gain skills and knowledge that was before only a loosely formed estimation?

What if I take a cue from another contemporary embroiderer and cut holes and make random shaped eyelets ?
What if I continue to think fresh and add raw edge fabrics in my folded down/raw edge seam and it sticks out like lettuce on a sammy to cover the rough border of one side?

What if I put something shiny like silver lame behind those holes?
What if I trapunto the bird and draw flowers with my thread?
What if everything old becomes new through color and composition?
What if I add some more web to represent the time this takes?

What if the story continues to grow in my head that this noble woman, perhaps a Princess sits day after day in her garden, stitching a quilt that will be for her wedding bed, if her kind and handsome Prince returns from slaying the horrible Trolls that have threatened the countryside with their evil selfishness and murderous intent?

What if she embroiders the garden on her cloth, with bird and branch and leaf and bud all blossoming with lovely hue?

What if I stop worrying about getting finished and allow myself to enjoy the feel of the cloth in my hands and the smell of the needle as it glides through leaving behind traces of nickle and I stitch in peaceful and loving thoughts for the time when Jude will open the box that contains this and she holds it in her hands and adds her own spirit to it?
What if the story continues and grows with the retelling and someone else is smitten with stitches anxious to be born on other bits of cloth?
What if?

What if?

What if?, originally uploaded by calamity kim.

I made slashes to weave a more colorful fabric through?
Jude did it and I did it on my chicken quilt. It adds texture and color. Just get your rotary cutter and go for it!
Scared?
Nervous?
Practice first then- get some muslin and batting and after layering it then slash it and start weaving torn strips of fabric in.
I am learning how to control the warping of the quilt as I go- keep an even tension- iron when necessary-pull, tug, use your fingers to scrunch it all tighter. Just try it.


What if I tied another strip- do I leave the knot showing? Of course! This is madness after all! Keep adding pieces until you have woven it all up tight together. Add extra slits at the ends to keep weave alternating with over & under.

It gives it more color and after I stitch some more thread then there will be even more color and texture.

What if I showed you the back?
I am just quilting with a layer of silk/cotton batting and will add the final back layer later.

What if I added some more blue along the edge?
What if I used careless and chaotic stitches.

Unorthodox stitches?

With Calamitous Intent?
What if I didn't care if someone said it was wrong?
What if I went against my nature, my better judgment, my years of practicing perfection?

What if I let go?

Who cares? Nobody.

Who will it hurt?

No One?

Who will judge and find fault?

This is an exercise in creativity.

What if you make sure to check out Jude's What if Blog and Flickr Group where other free thinking forward minded chicks are asking What if?
What if the embroidery bloomed and filled the space where it lived with an organic profusion of colors and stitches and it then became the fabric?

Contemporary Insanity

What if?....
What if I forgot what I read in a book a long time ago about Form Follows Function?
What if I didn't have a clue what the purpose of my finished quilted cloth would become?
What if I started sewing in the opposite way that I have always done it?

What if I put wrong sides together?
What if I had seams showing?
What if they made walls between the bits of scrap fabrics like wicker fences?
What if I thoughtfully pulled fabrics from my basket and bookcase with a princess in mind? Is she in her castle garden sewing pieces of her good Knight's gauntlet into a pillow to catch her cascading tears?
What if I used a precious piece of that medieval tapestry looking fabric that someone gave me two decades ago and I have hung on to, never knowing what it needed to become or even if I could let it go into something that might leave me brokenhearted at it's absence?

What if my friend Jude started a Flickr Group for Crazy Quilting Revisited and I fell in, spellbound by the freedom to explore creating pieces of quilting that might not ever become a functional object?
What if I welcomed the fear of doing it the wrong way?
What if I felt the adrenaline surge as I liked and began to enjoy the difference instead of allowing it to make me feel uncomfortable?

What if I stopped caring about what anyone else thought about my work?
What if I asked myself these questions each time I sat down to sew?
What if I allowed myself to truly believe there were no rules?
What if I grew and became  better at sewing or designing because of it?
What if I used the back instead, even though it's the wrong side?

What if I could still tell the same story without that inner critical monologue jacking it's jaws and tearing my self esteem to shreds?
What if it really is the Journey after all?
What if I said thank you Jude for giving me permission to not not need permission after all.
What if?