Diary of a Revolution Sampler - The End

Well, it's actually May 12 - a happy coincidence - and the Revolution Sampler is finished.

Really it was finished two weeks ago, and it immediately travelled with me to Ireland, I only got around to posting this today.

It's finished but I'm not sure if it is.

I had no way of assessing the piece except that I knew that as a quilt it was perfectly made. In Ireland a few people were actually brave enough to be honest about the piece and I got some very interesting constructive and positive criticism.

Criticism when it's positive is what allows you to grow. And so now I'm full of the beginnings of ideas for the next piece. I may also take the Revolution Sampler apart and rework part of it, perhaps.

But for now it's complete. It has been a great experience making it. I finally feel I can begin to call myself a textile artist, a term I have been very wary of for a long time. Writing the blog added a whole new dimension to the process. On one hand there was the surreal week when 1,881 people saw something I was working on to the realisation that even my closest friends half the time don't read the blog just look at the pictures!!

Two people were instrumental in this quilt's evolution and I don't think they have any idea about the part they played. Last summer Elena Moral shared a picture of the original graffiti from Germany of Revolution, with Love backwards, and Syk Houdeib helped me to collect a lot of the posters and stickers. Without their input this Revolution Sampler wouldn't have existed. Their interest along the way was an additional bonus, thanks.

So that's it. Not the end at all just the first step.

And for those of you who are actually reading, here are some inspiring words from Howard Zinn which I read whilst sitting in Malaga airport, with the Revolution Sampler next to me swathed in bubble wrap.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Howard Zinn. A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.