"Liberation in Pink" - January Journal Quilt Completed

Here it is - my completed journal quilt for January 2011. I promised the story behind my choices, and an explanation of the pink crosses...so here it is...

I have always had a bit of a "thing" about pink. I mean a negative feeling about it. It stems, I think, from my feminist youth. By the tender age of 14, I had read The Female Eunuch, The Feminine Mystique and (as my mum may fondly (ahem) recall) the Christmas I was 15 I spent most of the holiday reading Andrea Dworkin's "Pornography". Although my feminist viewpoint has softened somewhat over the years - a combination perhaps of pragmatism and motherhood ;-) I still am not at all comfortable with fluffy, stereotyped girliness. Which brings me to the pink. I am appalled by the whole putrid, pink, Disneyfied version of what constitutes girlhood today. I feel relieved to have two sons because this is not what I would want for any daughter of mine. It seems to me that we are putting our girls into a kind of commercially driven pink straightjacket and to quote a favourite phrase of my son's, it's "yuckyuckyuck".

So why have I made this quilt in pink?

Well, when I was showing my Jacob's Ladder to a friend, I commented that I was quite surprised by how much pink had crept in there, and more than that, I was surprised by how much I liked the pink, and how I felt it lifted the quilt. She gently pointed out that a few of things I have made recently seem to have contained a bit of pink. I mulled this over and thought - "Right, that's it. I am going to do pink!" I am not going to be cowed by its negative connotations. I am going to celebrate it. Pink - I am going to own you.

So here it is: me doing pink. The technique for this first journal quilt was "liberated" so it seemed very fitting to be liberating pink. This is pink on my terms and it's liberated. Hence the crosses under the buttons, turning them into the universal symbol for woman.

So now you know :-). It's pink, but it's my pink. I can do pink and still be a strong creative woman.

I hope my friend J likes the quilt and I look forward to seeing hers.

On the subject of journal quilts, I discovered the 3creativestudios blog this week and was excited to see that they are "doing" journal quilts this year. I am going to be entering mine into the flickr group each month, with the chance of winning a pack of hand dyed fat quarters! I am also looking forward to being inspired by others' journal quilts. I think this is such a fabulous way of trying out new ideas and techniques. I'm already looking forward to February's journal quilt - technique to try is "woven".

Over and out xx