Hope is the Thing with Feathers

I have two creative outlets: writing and fibre art quilts.

I belong to the Art Quilt Alliance. In November, our president gave us this challenge: Choose a poem and make an art quilt that reflects that poem. The “reveal” would be this May.

I chose Emily Dickinson’s poem, Hope is the thing with feathers. I planned to make an art quilt of equal amounts red and blue fabrics so that from a little distance the viewer would see “purple”—and that our country could be united in one luscious hue, the color of purple.

But try as I might, I could not make the quilt. I cut and stitched and tore the stitching apart. Aesthetically, it was a disaster. There was no way I could make a quilt that represented unity in our country.

I gave up. I set all the fabrics aside.

Then, I took from my stash a printed fabric of many birds in blues and reds.

I tried to keep the birds separate in different flocks and I tried to stitch them to some kind of meaningful background. But then I gave in. No background. No separation.

Here on this blog is my “Hope is the thing with Feathers” representation in fiber. It is on my wall –the first thing I see now when I wake up. It is three feet of quilted birds looking in different directions, but touching each other, one atop a branch to hold the flock together.

Covid-19 will probably prevent the “reveal” at our May meeting. But I feel an urgency to send these little birds into the “cloud” with the hope that we can all flock together, really.