Going Home. . .

This morning in an email, I received an invitation from the UNL International Quilt Study Center welcoming me to their Quilt of the Month series.

I followed the link to their website and read the current article for the December feature. Amazing! I thought. This created some curiosity, so I wanted to see what the previous month's feature had been.

I viewed a recent video of Yvonne Wells explaining her quilting techniques in a 'Question and Answer' session with an audience. I stopped the video in glee, when I distinctly heard her say . . ."I get energy from disarray. The more cluttered it is, the better I can quilt." (Boy, can I identify with this! I thought.)

Yvonne goes on to tell the group that she works on the floor. Explaining to her audience that she, . . . "has to spread it out to work." And, that anyone entering her home would . . . "need to be careful, because it's there on the floor".

When asked if she works with a group of women to complete her quilts, Yvonne answers that she cannot work with anyone. "I can hardly work with my husband in the room." she replied. (A woman after my own heart!)

To view the work of Yvonne Wells and to listen to her video go to www.quiltstudy.org. Her quilt "Going Home" was featured in the November Quilt of the Month series. The description that follows the quilt explains Yvonne's own message portrayed by this work:

Going Home is a story quilt about choosing to do the right thing. When asked about the meaning of this quilt, the artist Yvonne Wells explains, “Lots of times when kids or other people group together they get into stuff that they shouldn’t. Now, all four of these birds were all flying in one direction and one turned, because the other three were not doing right. So he decided to turn and go back home.”
Sometimes Wells’s message in a quilt is meant to teach. She explains, “The teachable moment is that you don’t have to follow the crowd always. When things are going wrong, use your own mind, turn around, and do the right thing.”