Somewhere in the trip, my brain got shaken up. It might have been when I was photographing a beautiful dead tree beside a Parkway overlook and as I backed, then began walking away from it, a bear popped up from the hillside, loped across the road about 50 feet away, looked at me and decided I was too much trouble to be an afternoon snack and then disappeared into the hill above me . . . It was probably that moment when everything got discombobulated and my marbles started rolling around in the big, empty place that passes for my brain.
The marbles were still rolling around trying to find a new spot to come to rest when I heard a voice telling me, "A Quilt!!! You are making a quilt, Nancy!"
Instead of my usual gulp of fear and immediate quelling behavior, I smiled and began to really like the idea. In fact, I bought fabric for this project.
It was when I was standing in Waechter's looking at the lovely soft cottons and planning my hand-painting of the pieces to be applied to the soft linen ground that whatever had been shaken out of place in my loose brain began to rattle back in its niche. I couldn't decide on a fabric. I couldn't begin to make the quilt I had dreamt up. I was standing there holding the most lovely white cottons I have seen since . . . when?. . . and I couldn't move.
When I got home, I was exhausted (riding for hours on end wears me out, sets the replaced bones to aching and then to screaming) but I crawled to the computer and e-mailed Jill an SOS for intervention.
The call I got in response to the e-mail was a calm, perfectly collected voice that said, "You are not going to make a quilt. Stop thinking about it. Go into your studio and make little pieces that are over in a few days and you can move on to your next idea."
And it worked. No quilt, but several small pieces in the works, now.
Thank you, Jill.
Oh-- I offer this photo of the bear as proof positive that I saw what I saw and did not even exaggerate. Scouts Honor.
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