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Monday, November 8, 2010
When I Think Back
2:07 PM | 
Posted by
Nutmeg Quilts |
When I was a third grader, (circa 1978) our teacher gave each of us a piece of graph paper one day. It was the jumbo kind - or what seems jumbo to me these days, as I love a 1/8" grid to sketch quilts. Anyway, she was not my favorite teacher, but I'll never forget absolutely falling in love with that project. She had us make curved lines in each of four squares, configured like a four-patch block. When colored in, the lines created tessellated shapes, that made boring old squares into a swimming lively dream of color and form! I asked for additional sheets and I even changed the curved lines to pointed ones, already breaking away from conformity and "doing my own thing." Graph paper became a new and exciting thing in my world that day, and I suppose Mrs. Nelson went up a couple of notches on my post, despite her policy that each and every math assignment be done perfectly start to finish, before it was recorded in her grade book.
When I think back on this, it occurs to me that it may have been a foreshadowing into my love of graph paper, which eventually led to my ideas that I could create something original in quilting. Taking up a ruler and a mechanical pencil and drafting block after block, and finding unique ways to fit them together is something I can do for hours. I try to take a pad of graph paper or at least paper wherever I go. Ten minutes of free time can lead to a myriad of ideas, as once even a couple of lines are drawn, ideas begin to flow. One of my favorite quilts I've ever made came from a sketch I did while waiting to go into traffic court. Go figure. At least some good came out of that bogus ticket - I won third prize in a challenge, which was a ten dollar gift card at the sponsoring shop. So perhaps Mrs. Nelson for all of my woes about her, and math class, did me a wonderful service. Thank you Mrs. N. I am grateful for the simple art project you gave us and the math skills. I want you to know that I'm exceptional with fractions!
When I think back on this, it occurs to me that it may have been a foreshadowing into my love of graph paper, which eventually led to my ideas that I could create something original in quilting. Taking up a ruler and a mechanical pencil and drafting block after block, and finding unique ways to fit them together is something I can do for hours. I try to take a pad of graph paper or at least paper wherever I go. Ten minutes of free time can lead to a myriad of ideas, as once even a couple of lines are drawn, ideas begin to flow. One of my favorite quilts I've ever made came from a sketch I did while waiting to go into traffic court. Go figure. At least some good came out of that bogus ticket - I won third prize in a challenge, which was a ten dollar gift card at the sponsoring shop. So perhaps Mrs. Nelson for all of my woes about her, and math class, did me a wonderful service. Thank you Mrs. N. I am grateful for the simple art project you gave us and the math skills. I want you to know that I'm exceptional with fractions!
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1 comments:
Ahh..this was a nice story to read with my coffee this morning! Great job on your first post!!
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