A quilt that has been traveling for a while will be returning to me soon. When I received the notice, I took time to look at images of the work and think about it.

“Sometimes they Fly Away” was juried into one of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA’s) global exhibits: “Aloft”. SAQA travels these curated bodies of work for at least two years. The tour is over and soon this work will be back.

I enjoyed creating this quilt.

I liked playing with the perspective of the houses, seen from different angles.

I liked the fabric printing experiments I did to create the interior of the houses.

I remember especially painting the sky.

I had done another work built on the colors I used in the sky: a mix of yellow + black + white to create a neutral creamy color. I used a big housepainting brush and just went whoosh!

There are more reasons this work was interesting to me when I made it. It was the evolution of an idea I had explored in one of my very earliest quilts, “What if one day all the houses fly away?”

The earlier version was intentionally child-like. I used a strong palette of primary colors. (Like crayons!) That deep blue sky evokes the feeling of a fairy tale.

I worked to involve the viewer in the story in the way a child would envision this. The point of view is low, looking up, and looking down the street at the neighborhood floating away. To see the little houses from this angle, you would have to be sitting down on the sidewalk or on a front porch. Very much a part of the story.

The quilt is actually about the experience of being a child in an insecure world. The flying houses are a metaphor for things the child thinks and worries about.

Several years later, when I created “Sometimes They Fly Away” I was thinking about the image of flying houses in a different way. The point of view is no longer low, looking up.  In fact, the point of view is now somewhere up in the sky along with the houses. We look up at some of them and down on one below us. The angled horizon line distorts the sense of place even more.

It’s not as clear what this one is about. I don’t think it conveys the sense of child-like wonder or fear the way the earlier quilt did. Still, I think it causes the viewer to wonder. What’s going on?

I’ve used images of house in my work a lot. This is another earlier work, “So It Will Not Break in Two.”

Here, the houses are near the ground, but still with an appearance of floating. And some of them have broken. The trees seem to be growing right up through the houses.

I’ve been grateful this week to think about these works. I have considered again the stories that went into them. I have remembered where I’ve been as an artist and as a life-travelling human.

Thank you for following along on the journey.

 If you would like to learn more about the quilts I’ve shown in this blog post, they are all on my website:

Sometimes They Fly Away
What if one day all the houses fly away?
So It Will not Break In Two

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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