About 25 years ago, our family ran a retail shop. A young lady came into the shop asking if we'd support a local chamber of commerce map of special shops and sites in our town. I looked at her example and was struck with the beauty of that map. She was the artist who had made the example and her hand drawings were all over that lovely map. Little circles popped out of the green landscapes of rivers and lakes like faeries springing to life.
This was the root of my idea for my quilt as presented in the AHIQ Improvisational Challenge.
And as I progressed with ideas on paper, I began to remember all the times in the education system I had helped children learn how to organize themselves with Mind Maps. They can be simple or quite complex. When I took my training to become an adult instructor, we used mind maps quite a bit to help the students learn how to organize themselves to take their skills farther to sharing their experise with adult students.
I found this map below at a site called Mind Maps for Essay Writing.
From this example you can see how to start a concept map yourself.
Basically, using mind maps was developed in 1970's by a professor named Joseph D. Novak. Please read more on the topic here. These concept maps may lead you to all sorts of wonderful places as they do me whenever a large project has to happen, I lay it out like this with as many idea bubbles as is necessary.
So this is the place I am starting from, combined with lots of color and fresh ideas for my memory maps around how trees have held me close.
Large mind quilts comes to my mind here.
I constructed and machine quilted the Town of Smithers 1913-2013 Quilt that was donated to the Town of Smithers in our Centennial year. This quilt was made from a drawing of this type of layout using a mind mapping concept. The final placement would vary from where you start of course.
Risks are taken when a challenge comes your way. A path not well trodden can lead to a beautiful waterfall or cliff edge, so go slowly is my motto!
I will begin more ideas on my mind map in coming days. I'm exxcited to play with a challenge again. I have lot of ideas and techniques to use on this challenge.
Best,
Caroline from Good Earth Quilting
6 comments:
I had heard of this concept when writing fiction but it didn't occur to me to use it in quilting. I'll have to give it a go. Your Centennial quilt is very nice. Thanks for sharing.
Very interesting Caroline....you have inspired my thinking.
I read your references and had to smile when I saw diagramming sentences mentioned. I used to love doing that when I was in grade school but never met anyone else that did. Not sure they even teach that anymore. And I saw flowcharts for computer programming included. Made lots of those while in college working on my computer science degree; however, never used them on the job in the real world. I loved writing research papers too; however, I used a different approach. My fav form of writing now is the lyrical essay.
Very interesting. I'm looking forward to how you use this in quilting.
What a great post! Lots to think about and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.:)
What great maps you’ve brought to this exposition. Thanks for all the links. Im very interested to see how you mind map your trees.
This is an interesting take on the subject, and lots of great links too. I'll look forward to seeing where you go with it.
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