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Lightning is like quilting inspiration.
Sometimes inspirations strike in strange places or at odd times.
I stop to capture the sudden illumination as my own personal power surge.
When inspiration strikes, I pay close attention.
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Like a Bolt Out of the Blue
By Helen Kelley
When a flash of lightning lights up the windows, I automatically reach over, turn off the computer, and pull the plug from the wall outlet. I am not really computer-literate. I understand only enough to handle my email. I am, however, lightning-literate. I know that when lightning speaks, I listen. I am aware that lightning can do amazing things to electrical equipment, and that it can melt down my computer innards. When lightning lashes and twitters through the sky, sometimes it seems near enough to jar my soul; sometimes I count the seconds to see how close it has struck.
Lightning is like quilting inspiration. I pay attention to that too, because I am also inspiration-literate. Sometimes the inspirations strike in strange places and at odd times, and I stop instantly to capture the sudden illumination as my own personal power surge. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night when inspiration strikes. The impulse is so powerful it jars me awake with a flash that sorts out problems in my quilting such as what color I need to make a dark sky glow or how I should quilt my tree so it looks like it is bending into the wind. Sometimes it strikes at concerts or in committee meetings, and then I rummage through my purse and sketch my thoughts on program booklets or checkbook deposit slips. Inspiration is as instant and as flighty as a flash of lightning, and if I don't capture it right at the moment, it will disappear forever, teasing me with only fragments of the illumination lodged in my mind. When inspiration strikes, I pay close attention.
I came down at two o'clock this morning to dig through my fabric stash. Before I went to bed last night, I had been wrestling with a maroon-colored reflection in the picture of a quiet sea. Last night's fabrics were wrong! wrong! wrong! and I went to bed with the problem niggling at me. And then I had a dream. I woke suddenly, knowing that I needed the shimmer of a purple red and not an orange red, to float on that water. At two in the morning, as I laid different fabrics out upon that silent sea, my reflection suddenly came to life.
One of the lovely things about getting older is that I can indulge myself. My time is my own because I no longer have to tote children, wash their clothes, feed their stomachs, and nourish their souls; I can make or break my own schedule. I have the freedom to play with my moments. I can take the time to sort through my ideas, finger my fabrics, sketch and snip and stitch it all together, and I am at liberty to do it whenever and wherever the lightning strikes me.
©HK 2004
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.
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