Helen Kelley Patchworks

September 28, 2007 – I had a dream. Like Old Pharaoh, but I didn’t have Joseph to interpret it for me. No lean cows and no fat cows in my dream; just a Hiawatha. I’ve been wrestling with this Indian for my quilt, not knowing where to begin, and last night I dreamed how to make him. I had all the fabric and the pins and the scissors and I sewed him from his head to his toes and today and I doing it, just like I did in the dream. It’s working, and I didn’t even need Joseph! Last night I had a dream!

September 23, 2007 – I did it! I jumped off the dock into the cold waters of Lake Gitchie Gummi for my Hiawatha quilt. I have gathered all the watery and beachy fabrics together and laid them out on the floor and played with them. They tantalized me. They scared me. I want so badly to get it right and I wonder about the beautiful possibilities and the fact that I might goof it up. Finally, I gave myself a push and leapt in and it seems to be working out. But it took courage.

  September 16, 2007 – I have my rotary cutter and my cutting board out.  I have been cutting fabric swatches for color wheels  This is such a strange phenomenon…..to lay these colors in a hodge podge and then take each out, one at a time and watch it transmute.  Each color becomes something else depending on what I place it beside.  My blues turn purple and sometimes green.  My reds get oranger and oranger.  It’s a lovely game and it doesn’t matter one bit that there is no pot of gold at the end of my rainbow.

September 10, 2007 – I have finished the Chippewa beadwork pattern borders on this quilt that I am working on. It is obvious that there is no vestige of old Noah and his ark that this started out to be. Now, it is 100% Hiawatha and his canoe, and my ideas about it are happening and changing daily. Noah will have to wait for my next quilt.

September 2, 2007 – My daughter, Helen, tells me she has always remembered the wonderful promise of a fresh new box of crayons as she returned to school in the fall.  Well, it’s fall.  We’ve been through the drought and baking temperatures of summer and now, here we are. I have a wonderful idea in my head for a quilt.  It has all of that exciting promise of a new box of crayons.