Edge and middle

"Edge" now has an almost-final title - On the edge of silence. It's about the world of words - with their nuances and expressiveness - that we live in and indeed take for granted; it ties in with the "loss of memory, loss of language" theme from my MA work. We're so used to happily using all the wonderful words  that we gather throughout our lives ... and then gradually as we age, the right word isn't always there - until, in the worst case, words fail altogether. 

Looking for the misremembered (and perhaps misattributed) quote about the roar that lies behind the silence, I found other quotes that are worth recording, if only to show different perspectives on what that flat, still, central region in my quilt might represent:

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. ~Jean (Hans) Arp 

We must have reasons for speech but we need none for silence. ~Proverb 

Silence is medication for sorrow. ~Arab Proverb 

To silence another, first be silent yourself. ~Latin Proverb 

Silence was never written down. ~Italian Proverb 

Silence is a fence around wisdom. ~German Proverb

The silent man is the best to listen to. ~Japanese Proverb

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time. ~Thomas Carlyle

A beige piece of cotton  that emerged from the stash seems to have the right colour - but it wrinkles dreadfully, and I don't want to add lots of quilting or stitching - it needs to be flat, calm, boring ...

... and unwrinkled.  What could be done to avoid wrinkles? Perhaps ... add some purposeful wrinkles*?

Having made the 8" sample of the border, I auditioned some gathering -

And then thought to do a mockup in photoshop. Unfortunately some threads found their way in - not the effect I was after, at all! -

It took a long time, and a lot of help, and a lot of explaining! to learn how to do this ... and when I try to repeat it, without the distraction of the threads, I've forgotten. 

In any case, I think the gathering is too fussy. (Austrian blinds, anyone?)

The hunt for a non-wrinkly, plain, boring background turned up some grey linen-look furnishing fabric which might do -

(looks much darker than in reality!)

Again through the wonders of Photoshop (filling with 50% grey), this is what it would look like if the centre was made one row larger, at the bottom -

The grey shade in the edited photo is making me rethink the grey, or at least have a closer look at it tomorrow (it did look ok when I took the 8" piece in to the shop with me). There's still time for another riffle through the stash in search of mid-tone neutrals of the non-wrinkling sort. 

*Another thought about purposeful wrinkles - perhaps a grid of self-colour machine stitch would be "unobtrusive enough" - some thread came to hand - worth a try, if only with the 8" sample.