Thursday, February 19, 2015

Anni Albers

Anni Albers. Yep, this one.
So I was hit by this urge the other night to try to salvage an abandoned quilt I had folded up and stuck in my limbo pile. It had started life as an homage to an Anni Albers print (you know the one). I started out following it faithfully, intending to duplicate the sequence of half-square triangles exactly, but eventually gave that up as my eyes kept doing some weird eyeball dyslexia, inverting the pattern and flipping the triangles and making it surprisingly hard and ultimately too fussy and frustrating to continue.

I decided instead to just randomly sew the HSTs together. I also added in some indigo patterns and polka dot whites with the solids, thinking they would add a little bit of visual depth. At a still fairly early point I began to feel like it really wasn't working, but powered forward anyway, because sometimes that can work. Eventually, however, there was no denying it. I didn't like the way the solids and prints interacted in such close proximity, and my (ahem) casual commitment to aligning corners was just not working out. Blech. Hated it. Fuckkkkkk.

Before the frogging.
That is always a sad moment—when you reach that point of finally acknowledging that something isn't worth finishing. You weigh the amount of time, and the physical and emotional energy spent, and you feel sad. I try to resist this, because I know that no effort is ever truly wasted—I always learn something that will inform the next project—but still.

I find lately that I spend that quiet time before falling asleep thinking about patterns. I am still flogging away toward my end goal of becoming a surface designer but it's a steep learning curve. The last thing I do before shutting down my laptop for the night is spend some time browsing Pinterest,  looking at all the beautiful vintage patterns. I also like looking at the many, many images of beautiful minimalist interiors that proliferate there. I find it weirdly relaxing. I was contemplating white-walled, well-ordered, uncluttered home interiors when I was seized by the desire to grab my seam ripper and put it to work on the failed Albers quilt. I didn't actually get out of bed and do it right then and there, but made a mental note to attack it first thing in the morning.

It took a couple hours (while listening to this: www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia—so good!) but I ripped it all apart and refashioned it, lining up the HSTs in vertical rows and inserting white panels in between.
Much better. Deep, satisfying breath. I still plan to add a white panel to the top and bottom once I get some more white kona, but I am already pleased with how it looks on my wall. I don't think it's the most interesting quilt I've ever made, but I'm okay with that. It makes me happy to have arrived at this solution for those HSTs. Relieved even. And happy to now have one less orphan in the limbo pile. Yeehaw!

10 comments:

  1. Ahhhh! I can't believe you ripped apart all those HSTs!
    The colors don't bother me -- though I'm not seeing them I'm real life -- the casual corners might have been hard to accept, but taking it all apart! Looks like a happy save!
    p.s. I'll be seeing your quilts tomorrow!

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    1. Hey B,
      thanks again for your snaps of my quilts at QC! And the shout-out on your blog. I am still a little sad about not going this year, but perhaps next. I've never been to Pasadena :)

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  2. I LOVE what you have done- and this design avoids the frustration of trying to perfectly match corners too. Beautiful minimalist look. I also love browsing Pinterest for pattern and quilt ideas - then dream about them as I drift off to sleep....

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    1. Thanks, Karen! I don't know why I ever even venture into territory that requires matching corners. Hoping this is the last time I need to learn this particular lesson!

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  3. Kudos for taking the time to rip apart your HSTs, wow. Not sure I could have done that, but when the energy of inspiration hits, there's no telling what a quiltist can do. Listening to an interesting show surely helps.

    The new design seems like one of those restful ones between what you call "more interesting" ones, like your spiderwebs. I'd argue that it's just interesting in a different way. But you know way more about that than I.

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    1. It's funny, once I am fully aware of the dissatisfaction I feel with a quilt, it's more painful NOT to rip it apart. I think I'd rather destroy it than have it sitting in a pile, all folded up failure.

      And I appreciate your kind shifting of perspective with the new design. Restful and interesting in a different way. Liking that, thanks!

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  4. Great story and I love happy endings! I've impressed by Anni Albers work, and still am, and even so, I totally understand and even more admire the boldness of your solution & your new quilt!

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    1. Thank you, Lotje! You were at this year's QuiltCon, yes? I remember your quilt from QC 2013 - the flying geese - so lovely!

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  5. Wow, amazing the different reaction I have to the original quilt. I completely and totally love it, just as it is. I love the casual corners. To me it is lively and graphic. Whereas the new version is okay, but not surprising or grabbing. Yes, yet more proof that I am totally out of step with the quilt majority.

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    1. T,
      I'm not sure if you would feel the same way if I had shown the before quilt completely unfolded. For reals. It looked pretty janky.

      I know what you mean about feeling out of step, though. Of the quilts from QuiltCon15 that I've spied online (admittedly, a very small sample), I haven't seen anything that felt like, WOW! to me.

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