The Stepping Path

When Judy announced our first theme, my jaw dropped all the way to the floor. It stayed there for a few weeks too. I N I T I A T I V E !!! How do you portray “initiative” in a visual format? For me, “initiative” is not a tangible, image-producing word. I usually work in a representational style and I was at a loss as to what I was going to do with this theme.

I kept going back and rereading the definitions that both Judy and Connie shared here on the blog. I also did some online research to see if there were more meanings and descriptions that would spark something. I kept going back to the very first definition that Judy and Connie shared… “the action of taking the first step or move”. My mind kept focusing on the word “step”. After ruminating on this for a few days I started to form a plan.

A few months ago I had taken a white piece of fabric and experimented with a new-to-me way of adding color and visual design to it. It has been sitting around in my studio all this while, getting moved and looked at, and moved again. I was not sure what I wanted to do with this piece of fabric, I was not sure what my next “step” with it would/should be. I measured the fabric and found it was just the right size for using in this project that should finish at 16x20”. I felt I had to use this fabric in my “initiative” quilt. I didn’t want to cut up the fabric so I decided it would be my background. I layered my fabric with batting and a backing fabric and basted it to make my quilt sandwich. I then quilted the entire background. I used a wool batting, and since my painted fabric was ample in size, I decided to toss the entire piece into the washer and dryer to bring up the textures formed after the quilting. My background was then cut to size and ready for a focal point.

Thinking about “step” and “quilts” I came up with the quilt block Courthouse Steps. I know that this quilt block is a variation of the log cabin quilt block. I wanted to incorporate some “steps” into my quilt. I cut squares of very thin fleece batting to use as a stabilizer base and with fabric strips in coordinating colors, I created some log-cabin style blocks in a liberated method. I stitched those to the quilt background and added binding. The name came to me as I was stitching the log cabin blocks to the background.