Can you patch me through?

My highlight this week was the Heritage Quilt Show. I was recovering from a particularly nasty bout of the flu that my younger son generously shared with me. My best art buds were either out of town or unavailable, so I headed over to the Bloomington Convention Center all by myself. I quickly got lost in my own thoughts as I enjoyed the pieces, until I ran into Monika Bonner. Monika is a fellow Spinners and Weaver’s Guild member, and she had on an extremely cool jacket. The latest trend in the quilting world is to repurpose an old sweatshirt by patch quilting pieces onto it to make a jacket. I snapped a couple of pictures and caught up on the latest news, but as soon as I wandered along I ran into a woman wearing another sweatshirt jacket that was embellished with lace. Wow! Then my brain started to work—hmmmm, there must be a way to use that technique in one of my pieces. I think I broke a couple of cogs off the main gear wondering about that, all the while enjoying some fabulous quilts that were on display. This isn’t your grandmother’s quilting!

The rest of my artistic energy, left over from getting better, was directed at my latest weaving. I’m working on a fern-based piece that features a panther chameleon. I finished wrapping the leaflets, which I described a little last week and created the fern fronds. I arranged the fronds in the weaving with just a little opening for my new friend, Ms. Chameleon. I had a lot of fun this week choosing the species of cameleon pardalis (little lion) from among several I found in library books. I admit that I’m forever fascinated by what I can learn. Give me a library book and I’ll find something cool, and the chameleon books were a rich source for new ideas. I learned that the Malagasy people of Madagascar have a charming expression that involves chameleons. They say that wise men are like chameleons: they have one eye in the future and one eye in the past. That sounds a little like motherhood, although often both eyes are in the back of my head to make sure my kids don’t injure each other or burn down the house. That also reminds me what I learned about reading the color of chameleons. For my Ms. C. there is a spectrum from green (calm and peaceful) to tan (sleepy) to yellow (surrender) to black (angry) to black with lots of orange spots (pregnant) to black with stripes (really angry). I know a few women who seem to progress through the same sequence of emotions as they enter parenthood; next time I’ll have to sneak a peek at their back and belly when I think events are heating up. Anyway, for my chameleon, the colors are going to be fun to do, as will the curly tail that looks like an emerging fiddlehead on a fern. It’s as much fun as a fiber artist can have in the winter!

On the bright side, the weatherman says we’re clear to have a week above freezing and some clear sunny weather. It’s time to break out the bicycles and spray paint and get ready for spring! The eranthus and snowdrops are up, the crocuses are ready to burst, and the first tulip leaves are peeking up through the ground. I can’t wait!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin