Who thinks this stuff up?

How do you go from this

to this?

Who looks at a mountain and says, “I think I’d like to see George Washington’s face on that mountain.  And as long as I’m carving, why don’t I just add Tom and Teddy and Abe so George won’t be lonely.”  When I look at a mountain, I see rocks and not faces.  But Gutzon Borglum saw faces and went to work to be sure that we saw them also.  Some well placed explosives, drills, lots of time , blood, sweat and tears and there are four president’s faces looking back at you from the side of a mountain.

I get the thought process…the creative vision.  What I don’t get  is the actual process.  I don’t get how you look at this huge expanse of rock and say if I put X pounds of dynamite in this little, drilled hole and press the plunger, I’ll have Washington’s nose big enough to see it in Wyoming.  Well, maybe not Wyoming, but you get the idea.  Someone had the patience and vision to take a small sculpture and reproduce it on a grand scale.

Aren’t we quilters similar to Borglum?  Obviously, not on such a grand scale….although who wouldn’t want to see a quilt the scope of Mount Rushmore?  I think if I had time I could piece it and still have stash left over!  But we are very much like the sculptor.  We take a piece (or pieces) of fabric and we see a quilt.  And we all have our own vision.  I know that I could show a piece of fabric to ten different quilters and see ten different visions.  Some would see flowers, some would see faces, some would see landscapes and some would see abstract shapes.  We would all see something different…something uniquely “me”.  And we would create something that may be similar to something else; (I adhere to the theory that there is very little that’s new under the quilting sun.)  but at the same time, something that speaks to us alone.  And the best part is that we can do it without one stick of dynamite!  Unless we want to…….