"Small words"

This year the Contemporary Quilt journal quilts are 10" square, and some are to have circles, some are to have text, some are to have buttons. There is no limit on how many can have any or all of these elements...

Right away I limited my colours to black, white, red (in all their variations, as needed), and have a stack of fabrics to work from - in the hope that common elements will be used in a number of quiltlets and this will unify them all.

Even though it was great fun working with fabric again, the process of just moving bits of fabric around until "it looked nice" wasn't quite enough for me ... what's the intent? is there a project here, or am I just making mudpies? can we at least get an overall title...?

With the idea of using all elements in all quiltlets came the title. To fit circles and text and buttons onto a 10" square is going to make it crowded, so the text had better be brief. Like, short words... small words ... those un-noticed ones that do a lot of work in the language. Not the solidness of nouns or the action of verbs or fulsomeness of adjectives -- the little words like prepositions and some of the adverbs -- little words that can express yearning or possibility or even the road not taken.

Some if not all of these JQs will use my "journey lines" fabric prints. Already two of them have transformed an old project, some paper I painted, using masking tape as a resist, and then applied to fabric.

Now that I have a title to keep me on track, instead of rootling through the fabric bin, putting bits next to each other, hoping for "inspiration", I should be able to start with one fabric and think about how it might develop. Or with one word and find fabrics that go with it.

Ah, "should" is a good word to use in this series...

(Hope you can read my writing!)