Observing vs. fondlingI've been thinking about the act of touching quilts. Oh, I love to touch textiles. I go to the fabric stores and run the palm of my hand across the bulks of fabric. They each have a different feel, even though all are labelled 100% cotton. It's a feast to my senses.We are so used to the feel of fabric. Our clothes caress (and sometimes torture) our skin from the day we are born. Fabric becomes a token of comforting security. My younger son detested - and protested - being undressed until he was two months old. A terrible nuisance when he had to be changed or bathed.There's a quilt, my second art quilt, hanging in the hall of my home. Everyone who enters my home for the first time walks straight to it and strokes it. The raw edge appliqued motives on the lower half of the quilt are starting to ravel to the point that I think I need to put a no-touch sign next to it. Why am I too timid to tell people to stop destroying my work? It's a beautiful, vibrant piece, beckoning to be caressed.It is difficult to restrain oneself from touching, I understand. But I have discovered a whole new take on the matter.I've never seen an art quilt in the flesh exept my own. This kind of work is not around in my country. Next week I'm giving the first ever class of artistic quilting in my favorite quilt shop. I haven't had the option of touching art quilts!The only access I've had to art quilts is on photographs. Webpages with detail shots are my favorite. I buy books on-line to learn. I would eat them if I thought it would do me any good! To learn, I've had to limit myself to observing in a very focused way. And I think it actually has done me a lot of good. I haven't had anyone to ask how something was done, no one to explain to me what I see.To the point of being forensic I've had to figure out what was done first, what was done next and so on. I've payed attention to the effect of details, picking up ideas of different ways to do the same thing and coming up with yet another way to do it.I will share this with my students, encourage them to try it out for themselves and let them try it out on one of my quilts. Posted by Ólöf I. Davíðsdóttir 09:59 . . .
