Serendipitous Juxtaposition

How's that for a mouthful? Serendipity and Juxtaposition are two of my favorite words, both in being fun to say and for their meaning. I love the idea of Serendipity, of making fortuitous discoveries by accident. My discovery of my love of quilting is one such moment of serendipity. And Juxtaposition, in addition to being just plain fun to say, holds promise in the act of putting two things side-by-side for contrast.

Last night, as I was lying in bed, words began flashing through my head. These words were rich with promise and resonated with me on a personal level. I had the presence of mind to grab my notebook and pen to record them. Here is the list, in the order that they came to me last night:

fascination
loneliness
mystery
hidden
shattered
cosmos
intensity
splotch
pistachio
linen
momentary
forgotten
hope
London
faded
fragment
symbolic
family
home
forgiveness
flames
sprout
lace
redemption
awe
key
layers
cathedral
reservoir

Twenty-nine beautiful words--each highly charged with personal meaning. As I lay in bed, contemplating the many and varied ideas for each word, I realized that two words together were even more evocative than one alone. Just on the basis of list position alone,

faded London
momentary linen
pistachio splotch
shattered cosmos

were the initial pairings that jumped out at me. Each one sent my mind spinning with possibilities for design. The combination of two words can be more evocative than a single word alone. It's in the interplay of meanings--how one word complements or changes another--that the magic happens.

Rather than use just a single word for inspiration, Serendipitous Juxtaposition, that is, fortuitous discoveries from the accidental comparison of two words, will be the underlying theme for my year of journal quilts.

So each month, on my Choose-Day, I will draw two of these words from a little box (serendipity in action) and use the juxtaposition of words as my inspiration.

My commitment for today (seeing as Choose-Day is tomorrow) will be to type up these words, cut them into little strips, and find a little box to keep them in. I will also find a little journal that I can use to journal my year of journal quilts.

How's that for an iterative process? Keeping a journal about keeping a journal! But in this case, it seems the right idea to record my thoughts as I create each journal quilt.

I'm so excited. This is going to be good.