Postcard Exchange Feb./March 2018

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” -Alan Watts…The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Elm Street Quilts offered to host a postcard exchange and I signed up to exchange with someone.

I enjoy making fabric postcards, but the last time that I made one was in 2012.  You can see that postcard here.

For this exchange, we were supposed to choose one word for the maker to use as inspiration.

My recipient chose the word ‘plunge’.  Here is what I learned about the meaning of plunge:

Plunge
• to thrust into water or other fluid substance
• immerse in a fluid
• to drive into flesh, mire or earth
• to thrust or drive into any state in which the thing is considered as enveloped or surrounded, enclosed, overwhelmed (difficulties, distress, war)
• baptize by immersion
• to pitch
• to fall

Immersion
• the act of putting into a fluid below the surface; plunge till covered
• the state of sinking into a fluid; being considered overwhelmed or deeply engaged
• the act of entering into the light of the sun, as a star, so as to be enveloped and invisible to the eye
• the state of being enveloped
• the entrance of the moon into the shadow of the earth, at the commencement of an eclipse; the state of being enveloped in the shadow

Some ideas that I considered (Very briefly on a couple of these!):

• toilet plunger
• plunging neckline
• dagger plunged into a chest
• cocoon
• eclipse

I wanted to depict something positive, something that indicated a leap of faith; some risk taking.

So I am showing a person joyfully plunging from a cliff into a sea. 

I am not showing the back of the postcard because I have written the recipient’s name and address on it.

I have also written a quote for her:

Plunge boldly into the thick of life. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I hope she likes it!

To see more photos from the exchange, check out the Instagram tag #esqpostcardswap.  I am not on Instagram, but I know that many of you are.  Enjoy!