Category: Quilt Block

When more is more

11/5/2025

I’ve learned to live with a head full of bees but these days it’s all about wasps.

So. Many. Wasps. Wasps that retreated indoors last week after the pest-control guy shot up the kitchen fan vent with a killer powder. Wasps that just wouldn’t stay away even after two pest-control guys came back to deal with the discovery of an impressive-sized nest metastasizing inside the wall. I spent most of the week whacking at wasps and sucking them up in the hand-held vacuum cleaner. Whacking and sucking, whacking and sucking.
It’s not the sight of a single curled-up carcass that gives me the willies; it’s the sheer volume of them. A ladybug on my forearm might prompt that little rhyme, Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home / Your house is on fire, your children are burned… Wait, what is that all about? My point is, if a cloud of ladybugs landed on my arm I would be screaming like Tippi Hedren in The Birds. Hitchcock knew all about the power of numbers to turn bird-friendly movie-goers into ornithophobes.

Poster art from the 1963 Hitchcock classic, “The Birds.”

A large mass of harmless insects doesn’t even need to touch me to get my skin crawling, like the summer when I watched my mother slap at a few flying ants on the window with her fly-swatter while behind her a black mass of hatchlings oozed out of a wood ceiling beam and swarmed the room. Even writing about that overabundance gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Large accumulations of a single object — animate or inanimate — cranks up the visual volume. Canadian artist-photographer Edward Burtynsky introduced viewers to the extreme-scale reality of global trade in Manufactured Landscapes from the first scene of some sewers bent over their machines in the Hongqingting Shoe Factory, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. There is no commentary as the camera slow-pans down the length of what emerges as a stadium-sized building full of several hundred workers, allowing us to fully grasp the enormity of this production. (And that was 20 years ago.)

Edward Burtynsky’s large-format photograph, Manufacturing #17, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, China, 2005 via Public Delivery (https://publicdelivery.org/edward-burtynsky-china/)

But the power of increased scale, accumulation of objects and repetition of patterns isn’t always in service for horror; how or when to use that power comes into question whenever I’m developing new work. Is more more here? Or does repeating the unit or method dilute its essence, reducing the overall work to an underwhelming pattern? More importantly, is my interest in pumping up the volume in art just hoarding?

An accumulation of matchbooks is just a collection.

“Matchy Matchy”, an atypical presentation of an accumulation of matchbooks (left) and a three-hour painting-sketch of that collection (right). (Carlyn Yandle)

A benign single ‘log cabin’ hand-stitched quilt block.

The growth potential of “Hearth” (2020), hand-stitched log-cabin quilt blocks of different sizes, is limitless. (Carlyn Yandle)

When more is more: A large scale painting of an overabundance of layered squares aims to overwhelm in “PopUp: Triptych,” 2010, acrylic on panel, 96”Wx48”H

These are the busy-busy bees’ questions that mostly come at night when the wasps have gone to sleep, resting up to torment me another day.

Quilting and connecting

9/7/2025

If you stitch it (in public) they will come

An artist-instructor friend advised me, as I was preparing my portfolio to apply to art school, that if I was planning to include images of my quilts and rag rugs and mosaic’d vessels, I should group these as Craft Use Objects.

I’m sure she didn’t mean it but the word ‘craft’ seemed to have a stink to it. And the fact that these items were for actual use (as opposed to useless?) was also a bit whiffy. I spent the following six years of fine-arts studies needling at the question, What’s the use of art?

I eventually found two good uses for creating exhibition-type paintings, sculptures, floorworks and fibre installations: making use of used, disused or misused materials instead of consuming new materials; and growing community through the gathering of those materials. I monkeyed around with job-site debris delivered by construction workers; broken toys from my sister’s kids and her friends’ kids; old embroidered linens, doilies and buttons from my mother’s friends and other artists; jeans from my brother and others; old paintings from my father; burlap coffee bags from the coffee-roaster; pennies from friends; and businessmen’s white linen shirts from, well, businessmen.

In the end it all boiled down to one three-word artist statement: Making is connecting. This is not an original idea and maybe a little obvious but it’s been my roadmap for creating ever since.

Which brings me to “Shatter”, the title of my latest virtually/almost/nearly finished not-at-all-stinky Craft Use Object. (After many decades of making quilts I’ve decided that any quilts that are not direct copies of a pattern, that have taken on a personality of their own, deserve a title just as much as Artwork.) This one has emerged as a field of shattered circles, a project that shatters any expectations for this quilt and this quilter. It also relates to the times of its making, November 2024 to June 2025 — need I say more? “Shatter” is a cozy, slightly chaotic project that embeds silks and satins gifted by friends, as well as hours of focus, frustration and endurance, all in the service of creating the many meanings of comfort.

Hand-quilting detail, Shatter quilt, 2025 (Carlyn Yandle)

The sunny, warm weather this past week made it possible to take “Shatter” to the park to spread out for a few hours of the victory lap in quilt-making: encasing the mess of batting and threads in a precise frame of binding through hand-stitching. We made it! And it’s square! -ish!

AN OUTDOOR TRADITION: When there’s no room indoors to spread out a queen-sized project, quilting is necessarily a seasonal activity. (Carlyn Yandle, 2003)

“Shatter” is an attention-getter. The pie-piece blocks of satin and gold top-stitching shimmer in the sun against the matte midnight-blue cotton background. It compelled some park visitors to comment as I bent over the binding. Nice quilt. I love quilts. Did you make this yourself? My grandmother was a quilter. I would love to learn to quilt. I found a great vintage quilt. Do you fix zippers? (Please stop asking me if I fix zippers.) By the end of the day “Shatter” was also the site of a long discussion with a friend broken up by her break-up. When all was said and done we stood up, hugged and I rolled up the quilt, the equivalent of seeing someone out of the office.
It remains rolled up, ready as another sunny, social setting or a cozy, tears-absorbent spot to stretch out on or curl up in.

MAKING IN PUBLIC: The neighbourhood park on a sunny, dry day is the perfect/only space for hand-stitching a large project.

Originally published on Substack earlier this summer.

Resistance can be beautiful

4/6/2025

Hand-making outside the dominant economic system

The news is inescapable. The Trump tariffs announced last week will “rupture the global economy,” warns the Prime Minister. This is on top of the inflationary wallop on 45 per cent of Canadians who reported that rising prices were “greatly affecting their ability to meet day-to-day expenses in the spring of 2024, up 12 percentage points from two years earlier,” according to Statistics Canada. Further, almost one-third of Canadians are “experiencing financial difficulties,” up from 18.6 per cent in 2021. It’s all led to a “gradual deterioration in life satisfaction” especially among younger adults and those with financial difficulties. On top of all this, Canada is in the throes of a snap federal election.

Yet life goes on. That robin outside my window is still doing its 4 a.m. wake-up call. The cherry tree it perches on is about to burst into pink snowballs. Below the tree canopy the Amazon vans still roar through the neighbourhood and the UberEats drivers still double-park to keep up with their orders.

Maybe, and I’m just spit-balling here, we can be like the blossoms and flourish independent of the consumer economy and the attention economy, that battleground that has us in a near permanent state of distraction. I searched how reverse life dissatisfaction and received this AI Overview:

“To reverse life dissatisfaction, focus on identifying the root causes, setting realistic goals, practicing self-care, engaging in meaningful activities, and seeking support when needed.”

Even this banal Google-bot response on the general theme of self-reflection begins with the word ‘focus’, followed by ‘practicing’, ‘engaging’, ‘meaningful’, ‘activities’, ‘seeking’ and ‘support’ — words in direct opposition to ‘distraction’, ‘escaping’, ‘frivolous’, ‘inertia’, ‘ignoring’ and ‘undermine.’ There are no Tips and Tricks in the AI Overview for reversing life dissatisfaction through retail therapy, no easy instructions to move fast and break things, or buy bit-coin, self-medicate, move somewhere else or to hang on tight to your privilege.

The beautiful thing about having a number of ongoing art projects is that there’s always one that fits the moment. Right now that’s Hearth.

Social making sessions resulted in this first installation of 'Hearth.' (Carlyn Yandle)

Started back in the beforetimes of 2019, Hearth is an infinitely-expanding grid of log-cabin quilt blocks that began with an idea: What kind of art-making would be engaging and easy enough to attract a diverse population, a big-picture zero-waste project that would cost nothing? What could create the chance to learn a new skill, meet people beyond one’s usual social circle, that would include the joys of giving and receiving, all toward a gallery exhibition?

Over the next six months, dozens of friends and friends-of-friends, neighbours, colleagues and people just happening by gathered at art studios, porches, around kitchen tables and living rooms. In groups from two to a dozen, we hand-stitched log-cabin-style quilt blocks from strips of donated fabric in improvised spirals around a central (“hearth”) square.

Some early stitching sessions (Carlyn Yandle photos)

The blocks were eventually all installed into a massive wall installation as part of my MFA thesis exactly one day before the university shut its doors for several months. We didn’t give up our will; we organized contact-free fabric swaps and took the project online, sharing ideas and stitching instead of drinking.

Socializing at a distance: a Zoom stitching session (Carlyn Yandle)

When the lockdown rules relaxed, Hearth was instrumental in rekindling social activity. Any in-person awkwardness dissipated as we focused on hand-stitching or just dug through the heap of fabric strips to create a pleasing palette, for our own blocks or to offer someone else.

RE-START: An early post-lockdown session with MFA colleagues

A street-front gallery show in the early post-pandemic; interior detail

It takes about two hours for anyone who can hold a needle to stitch a block, about the same time as any social visit. The makers, many of whom learned that in fact they could sew a straight line, were free to take their finished piece home, maybe to use as a cushion cover, placemat or the beginning of a quilt top. Most contributed their blocks to the Hearth project so their own handwork would be a part of a gallery show, with due credit.

As normal daily activity resumed, I moved the one bin of fabric strips and the other of finished blocks into deep storage. But just as sure as that cherry tree outside my window will burst into bloom, that project is coming back out for a show of its own. It’s a new chance to focus on practicing engaging, meaningful activity designed for those seeking connection and support outside this dominant, volatile economic system, away from forces screaming for our attention. In these perilous times we’re creating something bigger than our individual selves, one stitch, one block at a time.

An iron will is needed now

11/4/2024

Working out those wrinkles is so satisfyingIf you’re uselessly wringing your hands right about now, pump some iron.
Hear me out: Ironing is useful, which, in the few days left before the US election, is the opposite position of those of us watching who can’t vote or compel Americans to vote. With democracy itself teetering on the brink it’s best to stop flitting about, pants on fire, and instead grab onto something stable and practical. Just maybe don’t do it in front of the latest broadcast of any of the mega-rich misogynists’ rallying cries; the TV screen is no match to an overhand launch of an iron.
If you’re rolling your eyes at this suggestion you may still be triggered by the iron as symbol of just more unpaid women’s housework, promoted through those post-war images of an ecstatic housewife standing before the only board she has access to. If you view her hubby’s freshly starched white shirt as his day pass out of one of those little boxes made of ticky-tacky, you are still afflicted.
I get it; letting go of the iron-as-shackles connection doesn’t come easy when you are born into that milieu. My cousin recently shared a photo of the two of us, as young as six, standing knock-kneed in skirts and knee-socks at a kid-sized ironing board, playing ironing yet there was little evidence of ironing activity in my own childhood home. This shit was insidious.
Inflation was hitting hard those days, and the petrochemical industry found an opportunity: pushing polyester as the time-saver for women who by choice or necessity entered the workforce. When my grandmother found herself single in her 40s she traded her home-sewn floral cotton dresses for Sears Fortrel mix ’n’ match coordinates, got her teacher’s certificate and moved to a remote town for work. My McDonald’s uniform was an itchy kelly-green combo of stretch pants and striped zip-up collared top.
Skip forward a few decades and we’re barely treading water in the synthetic polymersea of fast-fashion clothing that fuels microplastic pollution.

Ironing has no role in this wrinkle-free, race-to-the-bottom system. It’s part of the repairing-is-caring continuum toward a circular economy of natural-fibre clothing and toward our own well-being. It relaxes both rumpled, creased woven cottons and linens and our fine selves. You can’t doom-scroll when you’re gliding across a soft surface, settling wrinkles with puffs of steam. Ahhhhhh.
Quilters know all about the rewards of ironing following hours of wrestling bits of fabric into new arrangements with a temperamental sewing machine. Even the wonkiest quilt blocks in that stack “will all press out.” Ohhhmmm.
The time spent ironing favourite linens and natural-fibre clothing is an investment in those pieces, a time for personal reflection on their making and their makers. Grandma Flo may have embraced her wash-and-wear polyester pieces but she never abandoned ironing her quality dressy things or her fine cutwork table linens hand-stitched by her sisters. When it was my turn to have her over for tea she would tsk-tsk at my creased tablecloth. That it was thrifted was no excuse; all linens deserved pressing.
A decade after her death I created a part-figurative alterpiece anchored by a Teflon iron plate. The assemblage of found objects reflects her strength in the face of tumultuous change and the little pleasures of her everyday like teatimes, decoration and costume jewelry.

Two views of “Teflon Flo”: Found lamp base, iron plate, jelly mould, tea strainer, chandelier crystals (Carlyn Yandle)

At this writing, it is Dia de los Muertos and Teflon Flo is front and centre and shining its light. A few feet away from this ofrenda is a deep scorch mark in the circa-1898 wood floor that, judging by its diminutive footprint, dates back decades. I take it as a warning from a past homemaker — I’ve conflated her with my grandmother — to unplug the iron or it will all burn down. Which I am not thinking will happen if Trump is elected. Not thinking about that at all.

A warning from decades past: Don’t let it all burn down (Carlyn Yandle)

Faith is key when you're cutting up family heirlooms

6/7/2024

Is it easy to cut up hand-embroidered linen tablecloths, runners, pillowcases?

It is not. As an adequate hand-stitcher I understand the skill, labour, time and patience that goes into each linen. I understand the desire to cherish these vintage domestic-craft objects made for the joy of it that are eventually passed around and down the generations only to be hidden in some drawer or closet. I understand the impulse to rescue them from the humiliation of their thrift-store price tags of maybe five dollars.

Cutting through all these layers of meaning feels a little like slicing into someone else’s skin. What right do I have?

Am I ruining family heirlooms? Or daylighting unused linens that have been in the dark for decades? (Carlyn Yandle photo)

As word got out that I was amassing old embroidered linens for an artwork I gratefully received donations from friends and family. It’s a lot easier to be the rescuer of those tragic cases dotted with stains or holes. At least I can console myself that I’m ending the quandary over whether to keep this piece of Grandma or let it go.

But the weighty, pristine Irish linen tablecloths that bloom with finely stitched bouquets and drawn threadwork borders are quite another thing. I take a deep breath and make mental apologies and thanks to the unknown or long-gone maker. I remind myself that I’m not ruining a family heirloom but daylighting the work of handmade things that have been in the dark for decades. Then I let the rotary-cutter rip. I am Edward Scissorhands. I can’t help myself. Sorry, not sorry.

This is the struggle behind Forage, an under-construction field of improvisational log-cabin blocks in my preferred scale of queen-sized. Each embroidered scrap is a literal snippet of a larger piece, the analogue equivalent of a digital thumbnail image. Machine-stitched together the blocks are as cacophonous as an Instagram Explore field.

That effect grows exponentially as the blocks are stitched into rows, then rows onto rows. I’m now part-way through constructing the thing as a single field (“top”, in quilt language). Viewed horizontally it is a chaotic community garden of 42 unwieldy plots that spill out into the paths (“sashing”). I find new patterns for connection while merging the embroidered elements of one block into another block through the sashing, in a sort-of snail’s trail of stitches. As I mimic these markings of those makers, I feel a connecting thread. I am walking in their stitch-steps.

Despite the garden-plot references, this work is defying the horizontal, offering a reverse-side textural experience of an unstable grid of frayed edges. The maker-contributors never intended for the ‘wrong side’ to be seen, but when it’s all brought into the light, the translucent stained-glass effect cannot be denied. Suddenly I see connotations of religious symbolism, and I’m wondering about the power of the loose threads and those cryptic-looking stitches when viewed from behind the scenes. Something about sacrifice or at least about having faith that the discomfort in detaching from nostalgia is for good, not evil.

That openness is rich ground, another area to forage.

Connecting embroidered elements feels like walking in the stitch-steps of past makers. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

A backlit view of this work-in-progress adds further layers of pattern, texture and symbolism. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Circular thinking can be a flow state too

6/2/2024

I opened up my studio yesterday to the public to get some general feedback on a new series of paintings. Because even though I’m compelled to keep working on it and even though I’m enjoying a growing proficiency in this mash-up of stitching and painting I’m having trouble articulating why — or if — they’re not just pretty faces. Mostly I've been answering their questions with questions of my own.

“Why” has always been the trouble. Also aggravating: Why ask why?
This is the reason I’ve named this growing collection of paintings that all basically follow my own set of rules of engagement Circular Thinking. The connotation is negative but hear me out.

Asking ourselves existential questions while we create is infuriating (Shut the hell up, Inner Critic) but it’s also part of a process that can guide us to where we want to land. I would like to be settled with the obvious reason that it’s my route into flow, or actual, real fun. (The “so fun” episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast here was recommended to me by my sister.) And they do get me there: into the flow of playing with colours and opacities, of focusing on one stitch at a time, watching how each layer of paint or stitching changes perception.

But I can’t settle with just what’s in it for me. Making is my way of connecting with the world. Much of my work is collaborative, so those involved naturally have a stake in the final projects. Often that’s in the gathering of abject materials, or the actual simple hand-working methods that bring folks together. So it’s easy to see the ‘why’ in these crafted objects and fields; beyond their own resonance they stand as an archive of the social interaction, an artifact of the engagement with materials.

The Circular Thinking series has none of that. Each painting is a singular, intimate effort. It does not reveal any agency embedded in unwanted/useless materials and objects. So in the making, despite the flow part, I feel a whisper of guilt and shame that many women of a certain age might also hear when not doing for others: selfish, self-indulgent, self-absorbed.

There is definitely something in the ‘self’ there that is the driving force in these improvisational, unpredictable and unsettling paintings: self-care. I ache for solid, reliable ground in these perilous times so I start with a grid, like the criss-cross of rebar that sets the concrete footings in every new tower crowding the Vancouver skyline, or a typical nine-patch quilt block. Nine eight-inch-diameter circles in a 24" x 24" "block" anchor to that grid and then I’m off, free of all straight lines, off-setting those circles by half in paint, offsetting again with more layers of colour in paint or thread until I arrive at an attractive/distractive done-ness. It is an improvisational process of revealing and concealing (repeat!) petal-like sections of circles, creating unsettling, kaleidoscopic fields. It is the kind of all-consuming process that reduces hours to minutes, that absorbs all attention, a safe space away from the visual onslaught of social media, yet reflective of our ‘everything is awesome’ screen-field of vision.

It might be easier to eat this elephant one bite at a time by knocking down specific why-questions:

Why paint?
Colour-play. Especially important in this watery corner of the world. It can also act as a dye/stain.

Why canvas?
It’s fabric, with so much possibility for exploring its essential characteristics.

Why the wood stretcher?
Another fibre product that is a natural with fabric. It's basically a quilt frame or embroidery hoop for painters. Building stretchers and stretching the canvas is an investment in the project ahead (a trick I learned from my father @dennisyandle).

Why the stitching?
I like to needle at the hierarchy of painting over craft processes. Each stitch feels like I’m sticking it to convention. Stitching into painting offers the digestible label of “expanded painting practice.”

Why all the quilt references?
The geometry of quilt designs is fascinating, mesmerizing. I have little aptitude but a lot of respect for the beauty of mathematics. The tactility of that geometry connects to present and past makers of objects that exist as art pieces or as items of comfort, utility and gifts, an expression of love. This is a less-digestible "expanded quilting practice": improvisational, mixed-media works with none of that cushy filling.

$Picture$

The geometry of circular quilt designs remains a beautiful, captivating mystery.

Why this scale?
24" x 24” is my standard sample-block size. I dream of an exhibit of all my sample blocks blanketing white-cube gallery walls.

Why two-dimensional?
Closer inspection reveals the third dimension, in the stitching. Also, the aforementioned sample-block dream show is a three-dimensional, immersive space of pattern and colour chaos. (I want to go to there.)

Circular Thinking is both the name of this latest series of grid paintings and shorthand for how I approach every new project: play, think, write, share, think, research, share, write, repeat.

Through this writing part of that feedback loop I can see I just might stop torturing myself with the existential Why and get back into that flow.

@carlynyandle

VIDEO tour: 'Joyful Making in Perilous Times'

4/21/2021

Click HERE for a 10-minute journey through the methods and motivations behind this MFA thesis. (Film made by Ana Valine, Rodeo Queen Pictures, August 2020)

Joyful Making in Perilous Times

9/10/2020

Where is the joy when you’re living in a time of a global coronavirus pandemic and a local toxic-drug epidemic? What is the use of making when your city is seized by global investment-real estate schemes, when there’s too much stuff in a overheated planet and a hateful, superpower president next door?

These questions ricochet around my brain, only abating when this futile, exhausting expenditure of energy hones in on the rote activity of knotting and needleworking. The hand-wringing falls into rhythm as I grasp at lost, tossed threads that I make whole and into whole new ideas.

Making is a very personal physical reaction to perilous times and unstable circumstances but working with found fibre is also an intrinsically social action that weaves in disparate economic circumstances, language, race, age and abilities. Braiding, stitching, knotting, needleworking create resilient connective tissue between one body and another. Strands thicken into solid links between the ancient and the modern, utility and self-expression, the digital and the physical, the personal and the political.

By exploring the inherent qualities of abject manufactured material, the body binds with other bodies and other places, some known, some not. It is work, but outside the tumultuous dominant economic system. It is an experience of the history of production and distribution through the material at hand.

Even in these times, when gathering around a table is a hazardous activity, when our pack species is feeling at loose ends, masked up and reluctantly apart, the tactility of rote hand-making grounds us into the here and now, one stitch, one loop, one knot at a time. We grasp at the tendrils, continuing the work, with the results standing as artifacts of a time, place and our individual and collective states of being.

Three major works created over one year remind me of the uncertainty, the panic, the perilousness of these times, and of the solace gained through individual making and the joy of making with others. The three are relics of two years of material research that culminated in a Master of Fine Arts 2020 exhibit set up one day before the university locked down.

1. Scaffolds

'Scaffolds': 2019, 10' x 10' x 8" All materials gathered by workers at residential tower construction sites in the Vancouver area.

2. Resurge

'Resurge' is inspired by the palette of the West Coast foreshore where it began.

Spanning 12 feet in diameter and grounded to the floor, 'Resurge' troubles distinctions between utility craft and visual art.

3. Hearth

'Hearth' serves as a visual archive of five months of community hand-stitching sessions at kitchen tables and art studios.

A close-up view of the wall installation reveals provisionally-composed strips of fabric and sewing pins framing the several dozen hand-stitched "log cabin"-style quilt blocks by many hands.

The simple blocks were made by artists and members of the community at large during five months of open weekly sessions.

Hoping for heat in this log cabin

11/5/2019

Comments

I have this idea for building healthy community in this pretty/cold city through hand-making. It’s a process of making peace with ourselves and connecting with others, transforming individualized desires (thanks, capitalism) into shared desires for a sustainable life and world.

Vancouver artist Jenn Skillen — collaborator No. 1 — beta-tests a freeform, no-measure hand-stitched log cabin block method. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

That's the idea. 'How' is the big question.

I start with a few rules of thumb. (I love that phrase for its controversial origin that is a deep-dive into human history and etymology, but also for the visual of the hand-as-tool.) First, the activity must be low-barrier enough to open it up to as much collaboration as possible — no need for special skills or equipment or fees or even shared verbal language. Second, the project must use only found material: freely available, with no better use (because there's already too much stuff in the world). Third, the project must spark interest, otherwise, why would people bother?

A decade ago, these rules of thumb resulted in The Network, an ever-growing public fibre-art piece engaging a wide variety of folks around Vancouver, co-created by Debbie Westergaard Tuepah. That knotty piece continues to weave through my work, mummifying a perfectly good painting practice, winding around ideas of alternative space-making, shelter, and safety nets. Now it's needling into my current project: the Safe Supply collaborative quilt.

'Safe supply' were the two words on the lips of the crowd at a CBC Town Hall gathering two months ago. Providing a safe supply of opioids would go a long way to addressing all the problems and fears raised by everyone from student activists to local businesses, from concerned politicians and developers to Indigenous elders: the toxic-drug death epidemic, violence, homelessness, sexual exploitation, theft, vandalism, mental illness. A safe supply is inherent in the view of addiction as a public health issue, not an individual, moral failing.

'Kettling' homeless people into Oppenheimer Park has resulted in a colourful display of a national humanitarian crisis. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Ground zero of this humanitarian crisis is the colourful, chaotic tent city crowded in Oppenheimer Park straddling Chinatown and the old Japantown. The sight of all those bright, tenuous shelters layer up with this history of racism and injustice, stolen land and lives, and soon I am binding up ideas of found colourful material and that call for Safe supply!, embedding it all in a design, with designs for this as a group project destined for exhibit in more privileged spaces. It is planned as a comforting activity in this often ruthless, discomforting city: a dis-comforter.

Historical clipping from the llinois State Museum website reveals the log cabin quilt has ties to ending slavery.

I begin this overarching theme one block at a time, and that block is, fittingly, the traditional 'log cabin.'

There's a long history of the log cabin block, ingenious for its simple construction that makes use of even the smallest, thinnest available scraps as well as its history as a vehicle for social justice.

I am attracted to the name that stands as aspiration for home and all that that entails, beginning with the hearth, the centre of the block. From the hearth, the block is built in a spiral of connected scraps to form a foundation for countless quilt designs (traditional examples below).

The work has not yet begun but like all collaborations it begins with faith in people and trust in my practice. Something will emerge. We will engage. We will generate some heat in this log-cabin community.

Some useful how-tos and overall pattern examples:

Traditional quilts made from colour variations of the log cabin block (clockwise from left): Straight Set, Barn Raising, Light & Dark, Courthouse Steps, Courthouse Steps Variation, Amish Crib Quilt. (From http://www.museum.state.il.us)