Sun-wise: 'the abominable Mystery'

>Without flowers, there would be no us. No poetry. No science. No music. Darwin could not comprehend how flowers could emerge so suddenly and take over so completely. He called it an “abominable mystery.” But out of that mystery a new world was born, governed by greater complexity and interdependence and animal desire, with the bloom as its emblem of seduction. This little wall hanging (1’10”/55cms x1’3”/27cms) might look as though it is a ‘deconstruction’ of Van Gogh’s famous painting of sunflowers. It is actually a very physical deconstruction of fabrics containing sunflowers, ones that I have in my stash for many years – meaning that I have spent quiet time releasing these flowers, cutting them from their captive background in order to reconstruct them, bring them alive in a renewed context – perhaps you could say, of evolution. The contextual background was at first quite benign, bland even. The simple structure was formed by two simple rectangular shapes, each flanked by elongated and opposing contrasts of tone and provided the space in which to place a vase, again using hand-dyed fabrics while still making use of already pieced leftovers. I’d developed a concept for several works that might use different shaped vases as a starting point for a theme – or in this case to embellish the backdrop with, first of all a sun and then a vase by making use of a green stem and leaves leftover from a previous (as yet in progress) quilt. They were placed emerging from the chosen vase shape for this manifestation - many more vase shapes have been cut out to work with in the future. Nice. Very minimalist.

Then the numerous released sunflowers started to move in on the scene, attaching themselves to two points of the green stems, and a third dropped to the base of the vase. I decided to attach these before quilting through the three layers, by stabilising the background with an iron on stabiliser I had in my stash. My current mission statement is ‘use what you’ve got’ – it’s all in the endless stash! When the three layers became one by ditch stitching the main straight lines, and after adding other side margins, one of yellow and grey Thai silk and another of blue checks, other already cut sunflowers present themselves for inclusion. Minimalism was thrown out in favour of balance. The two extra sunflowers were fitted in: one across the moon/sun, the other at cross-quarters.

I’ve learned a lot in the process of constructing this little quilt, such that seams need to be pressed in the direction depending on the density of the fabrics; something I’d known but hadn’t thought about when using the already pieced fabrics I had on hand. It would have been technically much better had I persisted with practising free machine embroidery – easier to manipulate the fine U-turnings with the machine. As it was, I decided to back the top with a stabilising fabric so that I could stitch the fused sunflowers onto the background before the final stage of quilting, only two at that point. It also provided the foundation for attaching the stem of leaves and the (setting/rising) sun.

You could call it a wabi-sabi quilt, which is a Japanese term that refers to the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, that embodies the idiosyncratic humanity of its creator. Being full of life, rather than the closure of perfection, the beauty opens up in the cracks, the worn spots and the imperfect lines, and reveals itself after the winds of time have moved on. This little quilt embodies all of those qualities as a basis for meditation on our personal lives.