Diary Quilting

I’ve had my eye on Heidi Parkes’s Diary Quilting classes for several years, and this fall was the perfect time for me to finally jump in! So far, I’m finding the class challenging, interesting, and inspiring.

I started with an idea for my diary quilt that was based on a previous plan I had for a series of quilts, but once I started the course, I changed direction. Thinking about a diary, what a diary does, what a diary is for, helped me get towards a theme that feels deeper and more layered than what I previously had in mind.

I started with a three-gallon water jug that we have been using to transport reverse osmosis water from our local grocery store for almost all of 2026 - there's a lot behind this jug, lots of personal meaning and deep questions and challenges I'm struggling with, and it felt perfect to me as a starting point because it is both so simple/ordinary and represents so much more:

The coolest part is while I was letting that idea simmer, I was looking for something to work on while on a call, and pulled this scrappy/leftover/accidental cyanotype piece down from my design wall, thinking to myself - do I want to embroider on it? Do I want to quilt it? And all of a sudden, it struck me how similar it is vibrationally to the bottle. I even matched it up and it just feels so meant to be - they are even proportionally very similar, almost a perfect match…

At first, I placed the water jug upright in the lower righthand corner of my background fabric, but it felt so stiff in that position, so I rotated it as though pouring, which led fairly quickly to the water pouring out of it:

I think I've settled on a blue and white palette, which feels exciting to me because I usually throw all the colors at a quilt, and it's fun to play with a constraint.

The next thing I added to the quilt is a lotus flower - this came about through a recent experience that led me to journal about feeling like a flower too easy to crush, and I had the idea of a water flower with a verrrrry long thin stem. But! When I looked up the lotus flower, I learned all about their root systems which are fascinating and cool shapes, and this image was really helpful for me - imagining that I can be both the beautiful, eager, showy flower AND the strong roots under the surface of the water. It's very faint now, just a quick running stitch outline, but I may add more to it.

The next three things I added to my quilt top are an embroidered representation of my view of the tiles at the bottom of our YMCA pool when swimming laps, a tracing of my two hands joined, and my swimming ear plugs. The embroidered tiles were VERY fun to do, I used a variegated sashiko thread I've had for a while waiting for "just the right project." It's something I've tried to capture in a previous piece, machine quilted with a piece of indigo-dyed fabric:

Swimming laps at the pool is one of the only times and places in my current daily life that I truly disconnect and let my mind wander. I unintentionally come up with some of the most creative and clear visions when I'm swimming. It isn't the tiles specifically I've been trying to capture (they are pretty boring off-white pool tiles), but that feeling of flow and breath and presence when that is my view.

Here is a peek at my current progress on Diary Quilt 1 - I say 1, because I’ve already started a second :)

This quilt top is currently drying in my front yard after some experimentation with Dye Na Flow paint and sea salt…will report back on how that goes soon!