I LOVE this theme of “Doors, Openings and Portals! When it was announced I smiled hugely–not because I knew immediately what I was going to do with it, but because it has so many possibilities and after a year of quarantine, don’t we all want to walk through that door into the world, into art and culture and friends and family and shopping and travel and, and, and…

The quilt shown above was a quarantine project that I did as a part of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates), the international organization that I belong to. The project was called “100 Days of Creativity” and consisted of a Facebook site, where participants posted a photo of some aspect of creativity they had done that day. It was all for fun and online fellowship and, if you chose to think of it as such, a small nudge to keep you moving forward through all this without losing your will to create. It was a daily treat to swipe through the photos posted, to see what everyone was doing, or how their projects were progressing. From around the world, we got to know each other through our comments and photos, congratulating each other on our cleverness or skill, laughing along with unexpected outcomes and marveling at moments of brilliance. Some of us, including me, structured a loose plan for our daily contributions, others just played it by ear, day by day. No rules–whatever you felt like doing. I started with a vague idea of making small units that might be later assembled into a larger piece, or pieces, using my collection of striped and recycled shirt fabrics. I chose colors influenced by the trip to Mexico we had taken just before COVID 19 struck. It was something a little different, using materials I have used before, but in a new way for me. It began to grow into a slightly mad, crazy patchwork and as I began to actually use the units to build something bigger, I thought it needed a focus to grow around and I used the image of a little drawing I had done in Mexico of a door. I called it “La Puerta”, Spanish for door, and envisioned it as a possible door into more work, using what I was learning about combining these fabrics in a less ordered way than I usually do.

I look at this piece, now hanging in my studio, with gratitude for the doors that my associations with other artists have opened for me. I wonder if the past year has opened new doors for all of us, and new landscapes to discover once we walk through those doors. As a symbol a door means, to me, hope and possibility. Now my Cloth in Common friends and I are contemplating this theme, while we see doors open before us. I think this last challenge of our “Community” round will be spectacular! Stay tuned…