"You Made Your Bed" is a concept quilt I began making in 2015. Part meditation, part social experimentation, and a whole lot commitment, over 1800 yo-yos were hand sewn over a period of three years. I sewed them in ferry line-ups, in airports, during art openings and festivals, at farmer's markets, in restaurants and cafes, at artist residencies, in hospitals, at work, at home; they were sewn on ferries, buses, planes, trains, and yes, automobiles. I worked on them in Vancouver, Nanaimo, Hornby Island, Gabriola Island, Toronto, Ottawa, The Hague, Amsterdam, Berlin, and the Island of Kos. The fabric I used was salvaged from skirts, dresses, aprons, bags, men's shirts, boxer shorts, recycling depot scraps, and thrift store purchases. The wood and half of the acrylic used was donated to me. This project was a labour of love and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The yo-yos reference a traditional quilting technique that was popular from the 1920’s-1950’s and initially represented scarcity and ‘making do’. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, women would meet and using small recycled fabrics or scraps from flour sacks, old shirts and dresses, they would sit together in quilting bees and make yo-yos which would then be sewn into a quilt for a woman’s hope chest. My traveling while sewing my yo-yos became a form of community and a vehicle to invite audience participation through the witnessing of my making them for the quilt.
Conceptually, I liked that the yo-yos looked like flowers. I also liked the symbolism behind the image of a yo-yo, a wheel on a string, in motion or static, responsive to its handler. This yo-yo quilt is not complete- at its feet sits a hope chest with actions and choices yet to be made. And although there are consequences to actions already taken, "You Made Your Bed" (now lie in it) is a story not yet fully determined or self-actualized. ©2018