Shadow Self – Part 1

I’ve been working on this quilt quite a bit lately and I’m finally ready to share the first part of this quilt story.

The first part, however, requires a good bit of explanation. Shadow Self is as close to a self portrait as I’ve ever made.

In fact, this quilt represents more of my life: more of what I have been through and what I want to overcome, than any other quilt.

To say it plainly:

This is an inner voice that has told me, as long as I can remember, that I am so stupid, so weak, and so worthless that I don’t deserve to live.

In fact, up until the age of 23, I honestly didn’t expect to live until 25, not because I suffered from some life threatening illness, but because fate would invariably intervene and wipe out its huge mistake in bringing me into the world in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s pathetic. 😉

Looking back I can say that this was an immature viewpoint that I largely lost after having my son, but even now I breathe a sigh of relief with every birthday that passes because it’s yet another year I truly didn’t expect to have.

Back in February, I really started thinking about this inner negative voice (INV for short). Even though I now see it for what it is, it’s still sometimes hard to discern my real thoughts from the inner negativity and self hate.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this issue needed to be resolved with a quilt.

This is not the first time I’ve used a quilt design to help me overcome a personal issue.

Release Your Light actually started its life being called Light in Me and was literally that: a representation of the amazing explosion of creative potential I had within, just waiting to burst out and share with everyone in the world.

I changed the name of the quilt after completing it because I wanted it to be not just about me, but for everyone. We all have this power, this potential energy explosion inside of us just waiting to get out.

It was while creating Release Your Light that I came up with the idea for this blog, which of course is why you’re reading these words today. So making the quilt worked!

Shadow Self is also starting the same way: I meditated for days about this oppressive weight I live with over my mind and heart and the vision for this quilt came to me.

The center circle is a yin yang symbol, representing the balance of both dark and light within all life. It rests over a goddess figure, severing her heart and mind with shadow.

While I have hated my INV, I also know that it has shaped and formed me into the person I am. I would not be the same person without it.

But that doesn’t mean I have to continue living under such a painful, self destructive influence.

Just like with creating Release Your Light, I feel the need to see this quilt, to live with it on my dining room wall every day.

I know that if I see it first thing when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I see at night, maybe I will take heed to let my lighter side dominate and shine through the darkness and negativity.

This tactic has certainly worked with Release Your Light. Every time I have reconsidered this project or thought of turning in a different direction, this quilt has invariably caught my eye and reminded me to share, share, share myself.

It’s not always easy, but the daily reminder helps.

As I work on Shadow Self, I have already started to chip away at the control my INV has had over my mind.

It is a quilt I have taken a lot of time on already. The design itself is very simple, but was sketched and re-sketched at the kitchen table while feeding James breakfast or dinner.

I had to take breaks on this quilt, as it hasn’t always been easy to see the huge black shadow that rests over my heart and mind so clearly displayed in black and white lines.

But that let me know I was on the right track.

This quilt is dark and it’s hard for me to look at because it is so true. Not all life is bright colors and butterflies.

A good chunk is dark and flat and full of anger.

It’s one thing to read in a self-help book “Love yourself“, it’s quite another thing to learn how to do it after 23 years of doing the opposite.

So that is the reason why this quilt is being made. It is a visual representation of my Shadow Self, my darkness, which will probably always shadow some part of my light.

But by seeing it every day on my dining room wall as the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night, it will be very hard to forget that every day I have a choice of how far that shadow reaches.

There’s always a choice.

So to sum up the design steps I took so far on this quilt:

First it was sketched using tracing velum which is nearly transparent and allows you to design without the use of a lightbox.

This allowed me to work at the dining room table, in the best light and in the room that this quilt will eventually be displayed in.

Using basic symmetry, a protractor, and ruler, the whole quilt was sketched out.

Then I finalized the design and sketched a copy onto plain white paper using a lightbox.

At this point, I began to design the quilting design. After the catastrophe that was my last goddess quilt My Cup Runneth Over, I learned my lesson: the quilting design HAD to be designed first, before any piecing took place.

So using more tracing velum and a protractor, I created 2 ray designs and planned the inner quilting designs for the head, heart, body, and background of the quilt.

I wanted the shadow section to have minimal movement and very straight, rigid lines because that’s what it’s like: living within a box.

The light side, by contrast, is full of movement: fire rays and interlocking lines run from the center heart so long as the shadow does not block them.

After the quilting design was complete, it was also transferred onto white paper at the exact same scale as the original design so they could both be resized equally.

I resized using Adobe Illustrator, but it’s come to my attention that there are several free resizing programs on the internet that can help you blow up and print out designs.

Next the quilt was pieced using Sharon Schamber’s Piece-lique technique. I wanted the pieces to fit together as perfectly as possible to create a smooth, even quilt top.

So that’s where I’m at now with half of the light side mostly pieced together. It’s a slow process and I’m taking my time. Sometimes I walk into the room and walk back out again.

It’s not always easy to work on, particularly now that the design is starting to really take shape.

But each step is progressing as it should and so far, no giant road blocks have jumped into my path, which I largely thank to good planning.

So now I’m off to start working on the dark side, which I’ve so far avoided. It’s time to overcome that hurdle and I’ll definitely post more pictures when it’s further along.

Let’s go Quilt!

Leah Day