Allure

 

'I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner that woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan. -Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? -I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others. -Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in

'F. W.'

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never.'

.................

Ahhhhhh! Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne in Jane Austen's novel, Persuasion. So. Good. 

In this blog post, I am going to attempt to describe how my fascination with energy and the story of Persuasion came together in my brain which resulted in a quilt. Okayyyy then...  

In typical Jen fashion, I randomly chose to listen to this novel while I sewed this piece. I had no reason to choose it other than I saw it and thought, well, I don't know this story, it might be entertaining! I was set on sewing something...ANYTHING back in February. Our Beeutifully Modern Quilt Bee had decided on the prompt of making a piece using an improv repeating pattern. I was still living at my brother's house then and had limited fabrics to work with but I was determined to try. I bought two charm packs of solids and decided I would add in my black and white scraps that I had with me. The other decision I made was to keep the fabrics in the color order that they came in the pack. I had set my parameters and was ready to go! I put on Persuasion and started sewing. First I made improv crosses. Then I had this idea to make minuses. I kept having this thought about magnets. I even dreamed about magnetism for a couple nights. Positive/Negative. Attract/Repel. Then I thought, am I making a magnet? A battery? How does energy flow in a battery? What are all the forces we can't see? Can two people have an electromagnetic pull toward one another? When two people are attracted to one another and get together, do they create a separate third energy? I had so many questions rolling around in my brain. 

I listened to the story and sewed. Poor Anne. Still in love with Captain Wentworth after her friends and family had persuaded her to break off their engagement years before. She was unsure of how he felt for her when he returned. Yet, even after all the years apart, the two of them had this connection, this intimacy, where they could understand one another by just one word or look. A magnetic pull. They were still in love with each other and clearly should have been together but were not. There are several frustrating scenes where the two of them are unable to speak their true feelings because other people are in the room. Anne constantly puts her feelings aside because of interruptions or it's inconvenient for her to speak them at the moment. She and Wentworth describe their muddled emotions for one another in maddening opposites, something between delight and misery, pleasure and shame, happiness and pain, half agony half hope. So many dualities. Does Anne ever figure out how to feel? Wentworth's letter says everything she was hoping to hear and she runs all over town searching for him. Finally, they come together. Hooray for requited love! What a relief after all that building tension. 

Anyway, what are we talking about here? Oh yes, quilting. This quilt is my imagining of what electromagnetism looks like. I'm not a physicist. I don't actually know what a picture of an electromagnet looks like, so don't come at me! The quilting is meant to show rising energy. The song that goes with this quilt is Electric Love. 

Allure

23" x 37" 

Designed and Quilted by Me