Venn Valentine

I have always loved Venn diagrams--those intersecting circles that we played with in math--perhaps because I could more easily find meaning in these connected graphics than in 2x + 3y = 10, and I have always wanted to use them in a quilt. This year when searching my visual inventory for an image for the mini-quilt I make for Tom each Valentine's Day, those Venn diagrams popped up.  What better image of intersecting lives where the place of intersection becomes even richer for the combination of two entities! And so I began to look for an interesting fabric for the background.

I had just about decided on a nice pale yellow green with the hint of vertical stripes that I had made while experimenting with folding fabric when I pulled out a piece whose personality pretty much overwhelmed that shy, retiring green. The energy in the piece was the result of pouring two different colors over a piece of fabric, a red purple of some kind and a cerulean-type blue on opposite ends of the container. As the two flowed into each other and combined, they produced some wild results. Parts of that fabric were never going to play nicely with other fabrics in a pieced quilt but they could make a great whole cloth. And besides, the turbulence of this fabric would be just another part of the symbolism, since our lives together have never been dull and we are facing a particularly challenging year of change.

So after much contemplation, I cut the fabric, opting for a 10 x 16" format, sandwiched it and began to quilt:

As I was halfway done, I had a twinge of worry since I often make quilts for Tom in greens, golds, and browns but it was too late to turn back.  Should have listened to that intuition.  My always supportive husband struggled to be enthusiastic when he first saw the quilt and finally admitted that he had trouble with the colors. I, on the other hand, love these colors. But I haven't entirely given up hope that this quilt will end up in the intersecting portion of those two spheres because he spent some time looking at it again today and decided he was beginning to like it.

And if our two spheres have intersected in the reading of this post, thanks for the company!