Finding Your Voice – Wanda's Life Sampler

It has been a long three years.

None of my close family or friends died from Covid-19, but I know people who have. At this point, because I’m vaccinated and boosted, I will probably survive any infection. Nonetheless I have spent most of those three years inside my home. I visited my daughter in 2021 after my first vaccination. I was so hopeful then.

Then Delta and Omicron. Cases are down now, and we’ve learned so much about covid and how to treat symptoms.

I’ve started going out to eat and it feels weird. This invisible monster is in the room and I know it has killed millions of people, and I should leave immediately. All of us want to forget. We experienced trauma together and now we want to gather and laugh and eat. I get it, but it’s hard for me.

So here I sit on my couch, hoping for better days.

Wanda

This is Mr. Wordle’s Ultra Vivid Voice.

I created this work during a Finding Your Voice workshop, taught by Irene Roderick. My intention was to make a quilt with the online game, Wordle, as my starting point. To win the game, you have to guess a five-letter word. You have six tries to guess it correctly. When you get the word correct, each letter is surrounded by a green square.

At first I made five green improv blocks. At one point the piece looked like a face (see last photo). I called him Mr. Wordle, then I killed Mr. Wordle because his eyes seemed to follow me. You may believe this was a rash decision, but I will plead a crime of passion.

The quilt represents the process of improv as well as the process of getting the right Wordle word. What is happening in my brain was translated into this improv piece. Ultra, vivid and voice are five-letter words.

The quilt measures 46″ by 56.5″. I used yellow, red and pink thread throughout.

I started with stitching in the ditch with my walking foot, but it didn’t seem like enough quilting, so I added tons of straight-line quilting, trying to echo sections of the piecing. It adds more movement, and it made me happy.