ma and pa

Ma and Pa

I was sitting here in the library working on a few things when along came this incredible man in my life with a figurine he got for me. He said it was us.

Now I know there are plenty of people out there who get gifts from loved ones all the time. I have never been such a person except when I was little and my dad would shower me with things that made him think of me. My father has not been physically on this planet for over 30 years now, and for the first time in my life I feel the very best that my father ever gave me in every moment he shared with me has been wrapped up in the most perfect package in the man that I now live with.

Every day that I'm with this man I feel so much more love for him. I well up with it and it spills out all over him. To have him in the same house with me, to be in the same building he's in, to work with his fabrics, to read to his little boy, to be able to do the dishes after one of his fabulous meals... wow, did the gods look kindly on me!

I told him last night that I could feel phase two of my time with him eeking into our lives. Phase one was getting to know one another, and oh! have we enjoyed that phase. I'm sure that's an ongoing one, but now phase two has crept into my brain and now I can't stop thinking and churning and creating and... There's nothing (well almost) I like better than to create things with his fabrics, and this morning he relinquished even more of his designs into my stash. One of his friends gave me a few bags of batting and fabrics, and you would've thought I had inherited the world.

In my previous life with the husband, I owned a quilt shop, ran another quilt shop, did commissioned work, designed my own patterns, and taught classes, not to mention wrote a book about a fiber artist. I had a 1200 square foot studio with five machines, a monstrous cutting table, a room full of fabrics, another one just for notions, a section for reading my wall of books, and every kind of paint, bead, yarn, etc. you can possibly think of. Ooh, and let's not forget the plethora of stamps and inks and papers and... well you get the idea.

And now I've got a borrowed machine, a stash of tie-dyed fabrics and t-shirts, a bag of batting, and a pile of fabrics that Dan gave me that I haven't looked at yet. The inventory I have now -- the one machine on my table, and the pair of paper scissors I use to cut fabric instead of all my rulers, cutting mats, and large cutting table -- pushes me to use my imagination more. I don't have the drawers full of stabilizers and fusing materials that made applique easy. Instead I draw onto paper the images I desire, and then freehand cut the fabrics I want those images to be. I don't have the tools I used to, and I'm finding that my designs flow easier. I'm more drawn to them. I just like looking at them so much more than what I've made in the past. I'm recreating how I work, and it's changing who I am.

I need less, and I create more. What comes from my hands now represents me more. I push myself to reconfigure how I work without all the tools and fabrics and notions. I stretch my limits until they're gone, and then I do it again and again and again.

I do it in a room that's filled with love for me. Can you possibly comprehend the enormity of that? There are moments that I just stop and breathe it all in because this is what I've been waiting for all my life. This outpouring of love. I want to do more for him. I want to be more for him. I want to grow myself so much more because he deserves it, and so do I.

So, I take what I have in my corner of the front room -- the fabrics, the ideas, the three spools of thread, the discarded men's shirts, and the buttons I cut from them -- and I send my imagination out in the far reaches of Idea Land, and miracles occur.

One day very soon there will be a website hosting all these morsels of imaginative fun, and I'll be sure to post it on the blog. For now, you'll just have to settle for some pictures taken of me on Christmas morning making a potholder for new friends of mine. Enjoy!

coffee and water mingle with the tie-dyed flowers I made



the Dan style is to embellish both sides



all fabrics dyed by Dan

All you fabric artists out there understand when I say I get to wake up every morning with this man too!