This is the first quilt I made after we moved to Manitoulin. Completed 1994.
The central traditional arrangement is made from just three printed fabrics, each over-dyed with three different dyes. (turquoise, tan and black)
Still figuring out how to "be" in this new place, I felt like an immigrant. I thought about my father's arrival in Canada from Finland at age 5, and how it must have felt for his mother. The embroidered text reads "today, yesterday, tomorrow" in Finn.
I painted a floral vine on the wide earth-coloured border, and beaded it.
I removed the beads yesterday.
I like it just as much without them.
9 comments:
I am gifting this quilt to Erika and Jay. I hope that they will use it as their rocking chair quilt in the middle of the night. I hope that the new babe they are expecting in a few weeks will be able to learn to crawl on it. Maybe they can use it as a picnic cloth for summer afternoons.
Such a beautiful gift full of memories and story! I think removing the beads was a good idea where a babe is involved. Best wishes to them all :)
Ah beginnings... your quilt for a new place becomes a quilt for a new life. Congratulations on another grandchild!!
lovely quilt. Before my mother passed on, she made a yo-yo quilt for me. She wrote on the back, if you need me, cover yourself in this quilt and I will be with you.
Gifting a new life with the beauty and memories of the past. It's a wonderful thought and a very lovely quilt. I also prefer it without the beads, the yellow circles make more of a 'statement'.
Susan
I said much the same thing to Erika in a note. I feel that this quilt is like a hug from me - from her husband's mother - to her as she becomes a new mother.
Also hugging Jay with the quilt too.
I love what your mother wrote on the back.
x
Such precious quilt to welcome the newborn to the world. I love everything about this quilt. The over-dyed fabric, the embroidery and hand quilting - Hugs Nat
Well, don't I just love what Susan's mother wrote on the back of her quilt, and don't I just love what you wrote in that note to your daughter-in-law. Of course I didn't see it with the beads, but that didn't stop me from thinking "oh good cause that would be just too perky for its own good" (which we know good and well says more about me and my current state of affairs than the quilt) when I first read that you'd removed the beads. Then I read about how that sure-to-be adorable grandbaby will be crawling on and sleeping under this beauty, and my thought pared right on down to "of course."
We don't have this tradiction of quilts as presents of love and care here in Spain. I love it.
I sitched one to my mother and she doesn't want to use it, though I always tell her to do it. She takes care of it as a precious and valuable work. I can't make her understand the meaning of the gift for me.
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