Recently learned terms: Quilties. Inchies. I don't like them. Cute-ifying things isn't my style. Making miniature quilts, yes. That I understand and have seen some very amazing ones both new and antique. The journal quilts and the postcard quilts, these also I understand and have made many. But why this apparent need to infantilize a craft or art work? Do people think it makes quilting less serious? Less frightening? Does it sound like fun as opposed to a bit of work? Maybe other people have other feelings. It's words and what words imply that bother me. I believe profoundly in the importance and power of words and definitions for what we do. I prickle remembering how the women's movement of the '60s and '70s struggled that women and their work should not be marginalized as unimportant. These words seem a regression that we are sheltering under like wet cats in the rain.
BUT I have made what is called a "quiltie" with appliqued raw-edge "inchies". And I love it. I enjoyed arranging the colors, enjoyed using the smallest buttons at the bottom of my button collection as embellishment. And I'm going to go cut out another set of inchies for a second one on the same background fabric and I have plans for a third that will not be inchies but different and larger and I won't call it by any diminutive, I'll call it a little art quilt. These names as I'm using them here are for swaps in which those are the operative words and most of the above is my not at all subtle protest.
Confucius said that understanding begins when we have 'rectified names".
