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| secret garden |
I see triangles.
I used to put rows of triangles along the edges.
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| when asked : she replied |
like thorns do when they line up on a rose's stem
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| all my life |
similar to how a child represents the sun.
For some reason I am looking back and thinking about the love and longing in my earlier quilts
and remembering the story that each holds.
The top quilt is a wall piece, about the size of a large watercolour (36 x 42 or so) Details here and here. The other two are large enough to go over beds. All are hand stitched. The heart one details are here. The self portrait in the bottom photo has detail here.
5 comments:
"Similar to how a child represents the sun." That is so well put. You always have a way with words.
Interesting reflection. Did you think about the symbolic purpose of the triangles as you were stitching these beauties or is this a looking-back pondering?
Everything was for a reason when I did the original stitching. I was always aware of the symbolic meaning of the shapes - the heart shape, the leaf shape, the vertical-ness of the reaching line, the covering over with net in the secret garden piece. The triangles in that piece represented a kind of picket fence edging around the garden that would keep out intruders while allowing them to peek over.
In the wool-blanket piece, the heaviness of the wool blanket represented the heavy burden of motherhood, while the hearts made from daughter's t-shirts and jeans represented how much love I had for my kids, mushy as that sounds. The dotted covered buttons - I thought of them as smarties. The triangles in this one are folded prairie points, not attached but 3 dimensional
and I included them because most of the quilts in this area where we had moved our family were finished with this fancy edging. They refer to place and tradition. They are red, which for me is all about protection.
The final white and gray piece - yes definitely, those triangles are about energy. They are about my creative energy and about the energy of feeling isolated by place - as if I was on an island even then (this is the earliest piece and we lived in Kenora when I made it) because of the snow and the distance from urban centres.
All of these triangles are set in a bear's paw manner - as if they are fingers on your two outstretched hands.
All of the above being said, I found that when I looked at the quilts from the space of distance, the triangles read more clearly in the two ways I mentioned in the post. protection and energy.
Thanks for asking.
xo
exploring the details in all three pieces and how the triangles hold such different energies within each context & am in love with the reveal of the secret garden on the back-
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/568/2484/1600/Secret-garden-detail-revers.jpg
Thank you Mo.
That reverse side is where all the secrets in the secret garden are. x
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