|
I am gazing at the quilt I have begun.
The lightness of the one side and darkness of the other don't match.
I am obsessed with this quandary.
It is certain to keep me awake at night if I don't come up with an answer.
Contrasts illuminate the best parts of every moment.
|
|
Sunshine and Shadows
By Helen Kelley
There is a strange and wonderful silence in the house today. Yesterday, the Nebraska family was here, and they filled every corner with excitement. It was a joyful moment in time. There seemed to be bodies everywhere. There were people sitting and lying about, playing and eating. Plastic construction blocks covered the living room. A 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle was spread on a table. Pillows littered the floor in front of the TV. The kitchen wastebasket was filled with empty pizza boxes, and in the upstairs hall, it was important to walk a careful, circuitous path to the bathroom, skirting the large aquarium installed there with a sun lamp that warmed Polka Dot, the Pakistani lizard. The lizard is a colorist's dream, dozing there, covered with glorious, fluorescent orange and gold spots.
Today they all went home, driving south into the winter morning. The house is quiet. This, too, is a joyful moment in time.
For a week, I gave every waking moment to them. I cooked, amused, and cleaned. I washed laundry, looked for lost treasures, and watched cartoons on TV with them, and enjoyed every moment of it. There were dirty dishes everywhere, and there were sleeping bags in my workroom, pillows and quilts behind the chair in the living room, and assorted suitcases in the basement bedroom.
Now I am standing in my quiet workroom, empty of everything non-quilt related. It is mine again, and I am gazing at the quilt that I have begun.
My current project is a small one. It is a picture of a house, and there is something strangely wrong with it. I have it laid out on the floor of my workroom, and I go in periodically and stare at it. On the left side are two large, dense trees in heavy, dark colors. On the right side there is an open area of lawn and sky with a single tree and a smaller tree toward the back. I have been troubled by the imbalance of this picture. Somehow, it seems that I must add more heaviness to the open side to match the opposite, dense trees, or else I must find a way to lighten those solid, leafy trees on the left side. The lightness of the one side and darkness of the other don't match.
Now, as the quilt lies on the floor in this quiet, I can walk around it and study it from all sides. I've cut out paper trees and placed them on the surface of the quilt. I move them around to see if adding more visual weight to one side will resolve the problem. I am obsessed with this quandary, and it is certain to keep me awake at night, tossing and turning, if I don't come up with an answer. This morning, now, in the quietness of this empty house, I am taking this uncluttered time to study the picture.
As I stand here, looking, the lightness of the lawn and sky has taken on a quality of its own. Like Lady Justice with the scales held out before her, the balance in the picture has righted itself in my mind. Now I realize that the light is as important as the darkness. I see that if I add more foliage, the darkness will make the picture so heavy that it will disappear into dimness. If I take away some of the heavy leaves, it will be overwhelmed with too much light. It will lose some of its focal point. The sunshine illuminates the shadows. They need each other.
Sunshine and Shadows is an old quilt pattern. The light and dark pieces form larger and larger diamonds on the surface of the quilt, and without the strong contrast, the diamonds blend together, and they lose their definition. Life's like that, I guess, with joy and sorrow, hot and cold, black and white. Every element needs its opposite so you can enjoy the advantages of each of them.
This house exists in a comfortable balance of noise and silence, sunshine and shadow. I quilt in quietness when I need solitude, and sometimes I quilt in tune with the friendly beat of music on the radio. Sometimes I quilt with the tree leaves outside shading my workroom from the relentless sun, and in winter, I work with frost crystals etching my window. I quilt when I am cheerful, and quilting always rescues me from the depths of the doldrums and makes me happy. So, I will applique my picture with some shade and some lightness to make it seem as real as the contrasts in my life. Contrasts illuminate the best parts of every moment.
©HK 2003
Helen Kelley is a quiltmaker, lecturer, author, and teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit Helen on the Internet at her website www.helenkelley-patchworks.com or email Helen at this address: helen@helenkelley-patchworks.com.
Helen's book Every Quilt Tells a Story: A Quilter's Stash of Wit and Wisdom is a collection of two decades of Loose Threads. Now in its second printing, the book is available at quilt shops, bookstores, or from us at https://secure.tpli.com/VillageQuiltShoppe/QV_Products.asp. Helen will be signing copies of her book at our Primedia booth at the International Quilt Festival, October 30 through November 2, 2003, in Houston, Texas.
View our archive of Loose Threads columns.
|
