Underpacked and Overfed

Underpacked and Overfed
25 inches x 18 inches

I started this quilt in 2023 right after coming home from London and put it away with about 75% left to finish. This year, while cleaning, I found it in my to-finish pile and decided it was time to pick it back up.

The appliqué pieces and stitched symbolism are a travel log of the wonderfully mundane things we loved about our cold, rainy days in London: eating döners (on the way back from Moulin Rouge), museum wings and things, cozy witch shops and tarot cards, pigeons, crosswalks, cemeteries, and double dickers (we never even rode one).

Of course we did lots of big flashy touristy things too, but these are the in between moments that I remember so vividly: the laughs, the are we there yet and extra steps, buying tacky umbrellas with British flags on them, layering the same dirty clothes multiple days in a row because we were so dang cold.

You can see the difference in stitching from then and now, In 2023 my hand quilting was dense and consistent; as I finished it this year, the lines grew wider and weirder. It’s become a record of my time and creative mood recently, a diary of sorts in a stitched handwriting only I can read.