Mary Ramsey Keasler : LOST AND FOUND

Way back in 2016, Melissa Averinos came to Chattanooga to teach a group of us how to make faces with fabric. It was great fun and she taught us lots about creating portraits. My first face didn't please me very much, and thankfully I had time to create another. I liked it a bit more and even completed it shortly after the class. Determined to try more faces, I cut and glued and made several more. Then, as usual, I was distracted by something else and I stuck those portraits in a drawer and forgot about them.

Somewhere along the way, in the infamous year of 2020, I completely lost my desire to create with fabric and just sat around making beaded jewelry. After making dozens of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces and lamenting my loss of mojo for fabrics, a friend sent a photo of her beautiful floral collage made with fabrics. That little nudge clicked and I started searching for those old 2016 collaged faces. It was a long search because I had no idea where I had stashed them. I finally found them in a drawer stuffed full of paper patterns from old art quilts from years past. I had even forgotten that I had saved so many of them, since I never, ever make the same thing twice. I also uncovered a couple of portraits I had created of my granddaughter and found that I liked them better now, after they have "aged" a bit.

In just a few days, I have them quilted and bound! Ideas have been swirling around like dervishes. Hopefully my mojo will keep me inspired to play with fabric once again. And I hope that some of you might like to purchase one of them before they are stashed into a drawer to be forgotten for another 5 years.