Quilt No. 93
April 2013
Quilters are
invariably plagued with UFO’s. To
outsiders this seems inexplicable. Why
would aliens be especially interested in quilters?
When you’re part of a
group, you forget that your use of terminology becomes highly specialized. Doctors get criticized for this all the time. Patients are baffled by their slap-happy use of medical terms. You leave the doctor’s office and you have no
idea what osteokerflugenglockenitis is but you’re pretty sure it’s not good. It’s hard to believe that quilters could be guilty
of the same offence, but they are.
I was telling my
sister, a non-quilter, about upcoming Project
UFO at my quilt guild. Participants
would register and pay ten dollars. Presentation
of a finished UFO by the given deadline would result in the return of the ten
dollars. Failed completion would mean
that the money would be donated to the guild.
She instantly became
fascinated with the idea that we would all be willing to do “UFO” quilts. I began describing the orangey fabric I was
going to use for mine. It was a piece of
“rust dyed” fabric that I'd created by spraying a piece of white cotton with
vinegar and then placing steel wool on it.
Amazing shades and trails of rust dyed the fabric orange. Unfortunately, this piece had fallen into “UFO”
status for quite a while after an unsuccessful attempt to turn it into a foggy
lake with flamingos in silhouette.
My sister thought my
UFO should feature Mars. Since the Mars Balloon
Lander had such an intriguing shape, she envisioned this as a prominent feature
of the quilt. Just like the YouTube video, it would enter the scene
with a giant bounce! There would even be a “Welcome to Mars”
sign to greet the Lander.
I wasn’t really
grasping that her UFO concept wasn’t the one that quilter’s are familiar with, but was instead the more usual UFO designation of “Unidentified Flying Object”. Not recognizing our disconnect we both went
on yammering about our various ideas for this unusual background, with me
championing flamingos, and my sister off on a tangent on a distant planet. I finally backed the nomenclature truck up
for her, explaining that in the quilt world, UFO means UnFinished Object.
And so what my sister
ultimately dubbed “The Nincompoop Challenge” came into being. This quilt is a mashup of the creative
efforts of a quilter and a non-quilter. Occasionally this kind of collaboration
leads to completely unexpected horizons.
Flamingos may find themselves lounging around on Mars.
Quilt Notes
My sister did the
original drawing for this quilt as well as the embroidery. The moons
Phobos and Deimos can be seen in the Martian sky, as can a single crystal
representing the constellation Sagittarius. The rust dyeing technique left the
fabric quite rough, so machine quilting was not an option. I did a minimal amount of hand quilting, just
enough to enhance the contours. The
flamingos were computer printed onto iron-on cotton, oh-so-carefully cut out,
and fused onto the quilt. They seem to
be quite content in their new extraterrestrial habitat.
A hasty initial diagram.
