A Rollecoaster Ride

What a busy and eventfull time! Starting mid September I felt like I was on a rollercoaster ride. My life was filled with travels, quilts and exhibitions, meeting old and new friends.

Quilts

Unfortunately, I can’t say much about new quilts. I had no time for making new quilts! I made a #5 quilt inspired by books for the Fifteen by Fifteen group. It was the first quilt inspired by Haruki Murakami’s book Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The world.

This was the 7th book of Haruki Murakami that I had just finished reading. I am glad It wasn’t the first because I wouldn’t be able to delve into the complicated world of his stories. The book tells two stories in parallel and only towards the end I understood there was the same hero in both stories, and they were going to collide at the end.

That’s how Matt C. Reynolds tells the summary of the book in just three sentences: In this complex pairing of intertwined stories, Murakami takes us to another world as he examines what it means to live a meaningful life. Scattered with intentional ambiguities, the book operates in contrasts — ordinary/sublime, conscious/subconscious, perfect/imperfect — nothing is ever equal. You could choose to live an unexamined life, content and oblivious, but the delight of this book is investigating each metaphor and pausing to reflect.

I recommend you read a little more by opening this link: https://www.mattcreynolds.com/articles/hard-boiled-wonderland-murakami

I am going to make two quilts for this book as I did for two previous. The first quilt is dedicated to Hard Boiled Wonderland and has a unicorn skull. The unicorn skull was given to the hero at the very beginning of the book and for a long time he couldn’t understand the meaning of it ( so didn’t I). Unicorns are creatures that connect both worlds, and as we don’t know if they exsist in reall, we also don’t know what is the world that exists beyond our consciousness.

Here is the quilt:

I also made a quilt to enter into SAQA global exhibition Primal Forces: Fire. It was rejected thought. Well, I am fine with that.

Exhibitions

September was a month of exhibitions. First, I went to the European Patchwork Meeting in Alsace, France where I was a coordinator of the SAQA regional Europe and Middle East exhibition Wide Horizons IX. It was a new experience for me. I am glad everything went very well. We had many visitors, also our corner at the gallery was a meeting place for old and new friends. In October Wide Horizons IX traveled to Abilmente, Vicenza- Italy and in April of 2025 it will travel to the Brno Patchwork meeting in Czech.

From Alsace I rushed to Heidelberg, Germany where I attended an opening of the SAQA global exhibition Abstraction: Textural Elements. My quilt Color Play was accepted into that collection:

In September and October I also got some wonderful news: my quilts have been accepted into the Quilt National 25 and to the Heidelberg Quilt Triennial. In the quilters’ world it sounds like being nominated to Oskar in the cinema world.

Travels

To add more to the rollecoaster, despite travels related to exhibitions, in October I traveled to Spain and Portugal. That was my dream come true trip. I love everything about Spain, especially flamenco and guitar music. Portugal just came along. I was in the company of my good friends. We enjoyed going to historic places, listening to music and tasting food and wine. I also had a chance to practice my Spanish that I’ve been studying for three years now. Three unforgettable weeks of adventures! Just a few photos for you to enjoy:

Now I have to slow down and start sewing again. I really miss it, my fingera are itching and my imagnation is going wild.