As I go through my
rather well ordered stash of fabrics I think to myself that I must have thought
I was going to live forever – or perhaps have many future lives. The colour
combinations of the fabrics as they are grouped in the plastic tubs remind me
that when I first saw them I most likely had a project in mind, which then
floated off into the ether. I started quilting (and collecting) in 1994, 22
years ago, so my stash is quite extensive! I think it is indicative of my birth
number. Being a number one, I am typically an initiator, a generator of many
ideas, and dreams maybe. The latest quilt for Sheila began by resurrecting a collection of
small swatches made several years ago to try out the technique of raw-edge appliqués, both positive
and in reverse: that is, applying shapes to the surface, and cutting back to
reveal the fabric hidden beneath. These swatches of gum-leaf shapes and colours
were made a while back now, but seemed to fit Sheila’s general idea for a ‘tree
scape’ - something to celebrate her love of trees in the bush. I had started with the idea of more distant landscape, but
when I showed the sample swatches to Sheila, she liked them. So, the focus
zoomed in, and the more serious work of design and further construction began.
More swatches were
made, using the same fabrics from my collection that I’d begun with: hand dyed
cottons, many by Dianne Johnston of Queensland. I wanted the leaves to continue
to dance in all their shapes and sizes, in the light of bright sunshine and mottled
shade, coming to the forefront and blending back into the dense Australian
bush. I wanted it to show the rather wild variety of colours each leaf goes
through until they finally settled as leaf litter to nourish the Earth that
gave them life and form. Here is the final result: a
leaf medley for Sheila, which I called “See through Me”.
As a result of the
quilting process, gum-leaf outlines are scattered across the back of the quilt.
For the dedication I decided to use a screen-print done many years ago by
friend Sue Swanson, based on an image from the “Swinging Bridges” series of
Goddess images, published by dear friend thea Gaia (then Rainbow) in the 1980s.
Originally carved from Phoenician
ivory in the 8th century BCE, she has been stored in the Iraq
Museum, Baghdad, (- and sadly, may no longer exist). She is now printed onto
fabric, has an open face, showing a serene and all-knowing smile. As a goddess worshipped by early Middle
Eastern peoples, ‘She’, (the one who is known by ten thousand names), represented
the power of the feminine principle in divinity, and was given the attribution
of being the Creatrix capable of seeding all possibility according to her
wisdom.
For this quilt I chose to honour the spirit of “She-of-Ten-Thousand-Names”
with name she was known by, Astarte, she who is the See-r, with the additional invocation from the publication: “seeing with her
vision, following her line of sight – we reach beyond boundaries.” It is an invitation to realise that 'there is more than meets the eye'; to see
more, allow more in through the eyes and become more finely attuned to 'seeing through' by becoming more open to the reality of
our interdependence with the natural world. It is the leaves from trees
that give us the oxygen we need to breathe, for example, rather than trees as
commodities from which to make reckless financial gain, one way or another. Derived
from other more ancient wisdoms of human life in relation to the Earth as our
home that I had come across in researching ideas for Sheila’s quilt, I included
this thought: “The land does not belong to us…we belong to the land”.
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