Wild Arum

This is a quilt I made maybe six years ago now - and it was given to a friend as part of a barter,
my creative time for her emotional support and the time that takes!!

It began life as a single inch scrap of material - the sort that gets sent to you for
ordering via the post! That set the colour scheme and the theme for this quilt as
the scrap was a stylised print of the arum flower.

The patchwork block was taken from a quilting magazine but I then decided to add my own applique block which depicted an image of a local wild plant 'Lords and Ladies', 'Cuckoo Pint' ....
or in otherwords the wild Arum.
I still took this to be an image of peace as the stucture of the plant is the same as the white 'Peace Lily' often sold as a houseplant.

As is my wont the border include a classic celtic design, the celtic knot, used as a repeat
with the diamond motif picking up the repeat from the central quilted section.

In the centre was the panel that for me was the main 'thrust' of this quilt so to speak, my own large celtic knot and, as I was stitching this, the following thoughts kept streaming through my mind.....

In the eternal knot that marks our lives,
where we continuously follow our paths and cover so many 'miles' -
do we in fact travel so far?

Always at the centre is ourselves ,
need we wander all these pathways - well, I guess that is experience
and hopefully wisdom......
but always what is nearest is the space 'that is'....ourselves.
Shouldn't we let the search move inwards and always there, at the centre,
is that thing we call Peace!

So there she is...... Wild Arum - peace lily,
hope you like!

The Silken rose

This is a small quilt that I stitched a number of years ago now......
but it still sits waiting for a home!
I wanted to have a go at wholecloth quilting but decided on this cot-size piece I suppose it would be called - it sits on top of a double bed and just covers the bottom half.

I used an oyster pink dupion silk and stitched with a matching silk thread.
The design just seemed to happen really but I had been admiring a cross-stitch pattern for the rose window at York Minster at the time - the cross-stitch never happened but I so enjoyed making this quilt.... even if the seed stitch in the centre-piece drove me nuts!

I've found it quite difficult to get a decent phot of it but I like this one because it shows the lovely sheen of the silk and picks up on the play of light and dark on the stitching and pattern
that is is one of the ouotcomes of quilting that I love so much.

Someday I might be adventurous and try a larger piece!!!!!