wild geese

wild geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. 

--Mary Oliver

This quilt was born from a passionate, all-consuming, full-bodied love of colour. In pairing each fabric up with a partner to form the basic half-square triangle blocks, I let the "soft animal of my body" (thanks, M.O.) decide. Instinct. Gut-reaction. A swelling of joy deep inside my rib-cage when the fabrics were just right.

All of the fabrics I cut were lovely, and yet, in pairing them up, some colours dulled each other, while others made their partner sing. I tried not to think about it, and just kept trying colours together until my heart said, "Yes! These two HAVE to be together."

No maybes.



The quilt was inspired, originally, by an Amish layout, which called to me from the pages of a book like (you guessed it), "wild geese, harsh and exciting". I had planned to follow suit, using only solids in the Amish tradition, but when a half yard of Anna Maria Horner's "Ghost Wing" arrived in the post, it was just too perfect of a colour not to use -- that blend of minty green and turquoise that is so elusive. The pops of orange from the snippets of large-scale butterflies in the print give the quilt another dimension. I also added in a few rows of PB&J's "Picnic Raspberry Jam", which again, put a bit of a geometric spin on the Amish design.

I'm almost tempted to call this "Wild Geese I" right off the bat, as there is no doubt in my mind that I'll repeat this basic pattern with other flocks of other colours!