BQF: Spring 2011

I think the blogger outage felled a lot of posting plans over the past 24 hours. I had hoped to get a Bloggers' Quilt Festival post up this morning, before I left for a weekend away, but was thwarted by technology. I'm back on my college campus for a swim/dive team reunion (I was a diver), and I'm snagging some internet time in the library before meeting up with former teammates for drinks and such.

My BQF choice may be familiar to regular blog readers and DQS10 participants, but I think it's the piece that best exemplifies my learning over the past 6 months. One of the things I love most about quilting is that I can always learn something new, and I've been pushing myself to tackle new techniques as well as tasks that intimidate me (circles!). In fact, I think it's safe to say that my 2011 mantra and goal has been "try new things." And DQS10 offered me the chance to make a pojagi panel for my partner.

I first encountered Pojagi through Victoria's lovely panels and followed her tutorial for making pojagi seams. This piece also represents my first use of shot cottons and cross weaves, which I fell for hard. I love the extra texture and interest the different warp and woof threads give, and I think these textiles really make the intentional simplicity of pojagi shine.

To me, this image conveys both softness and roughness. Pojagi was developed as a means of sewing work cloth -- cloth that would be used to wrap items, to carry things. As such, it should display a certain roughness, a testament akin to calloused hands or well-worn boots. But it also protects its contents from the elements or harm, and in that sense should exude softness as well. I like that even a hanging panel can speak to these qualities simultaneously, and I'm thinking of developing some challah covers using this method as I think it would convey the multiple purposes of of a challah cover, which covers and protects as well as beautifies and sacralizes.