Quilt - Dance of the Snowdrop

Here is the flower which to me is an expression of the joy of new life that comes to this part of the world each spring with the emergence of this, the beautiful and very delicate snowdrop. When the world is still grey and the gound cold and often hard, unbelievably this tiny flower pushes through and nods its delicate head in the heavy winds.

I love the pure whiteness of the petals, the amazing bright green that edges the tiny inner trumpet, the way there is only the tri-petal shape to create this little wonder which hangs from an arching stem that seems so tiny and yet proves to be so sturdy.....

This following octagonal quilt is an expression of the joy I find in this flower, I was inspired to begin having completed spinning some yarn in the early spring one year - a green dyed alpaca blend that was soft and fine.
This described the edging of the snowdrop flower for me and then gave me the base to follow with the green and white colour scheme - why octagonal, not planned it simply evolved!

It took a while to complete being hand-stitched throughout so the first photo of completion happened in the summer months!

The design of the trisceles came from an actual drawing of a celtic artifact I found in a favourite book of mine and echoed the tri-shaped nature of the snowdrop - and the couching with my green yarn created 'the dance' on the quilt.

I then built on the base design by drawing in and quilting the outline of the snowdrop flower...
the central star was a 'compass' that speaks of all the directions that can be taken in our lives...

A further echo of 'three' was having that number of bands in the design, the central circle or 'dance', another band of white running around that and the third and last border that picked up the green and was itself quilted with another trisceles 'running' design.

Dance of the Snowdrop

We speak of the three,
Light of life,
love of the heart
and breath of the wind.



Hope you like!