I’m a little late with this post because the pattern of my life was interrupted this month. But the Rhythm has been re-established so here is my take on Pattern, our latest prompt.

My quilting experience began with a quilt that someone else had designed and I used their pattern to assemble many pieces of patterned fabric together to make a pleasing picture.  The experience of making was what appealed to me at the time, and I continued to make quilts using the traditional patterns and commercial fabrics available in my local quilt shop.  I bought coordinated fabrics and the entire range of some of the biggest names in fabric design, then sewed them up in ever more intricate patterns until all of my family had a bed quilt to snuggle into.

After a while I was bored, and no-one needed another quilt.

I started to notice some modern quilts, which were edgier and seemed to allow the quilter to inject their own ideas into the quilt, with the patterns of more traditional quilts becoming the structure or base line that supported the design.  Then I saw some improv quilts and realised that quilts could be an expression of my creativity.  I didn’t realise until later that Improv Quilting can be highly structured and that the best improv still follows a pattern, like improv in Jazz music.

So, like a person learning to play an instrument for the first time after listening to a few records, I decided that Improv was my thing. I was going to quilt without a pattern!

Over the years my style has changed but the underlying principles of using repetition and a rhythm to build a base, then adding a lyrical line with diversions and riffs that seem unrelated, but ultimately add to the story, has become a recurrent pattern for me.  It doesn’t mean that the pattern is set; I think it will always diverge and morph and recolor itself as I explore the new, and repeat aspects of the past from a different perspective, but that is the whole point of the making.