It's done.
Hallelujah!
I connect this poem to it, by way of a name:
Fishing in the Keep of Silence
by Linda Gregg
There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as He lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the herons
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: There are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.
The front:
The back, intended to be reversible:
I started with Kim's vision, explained here. I gained impetus from Gee's Bend quilts.
My method:
I used three sizes of patches and then I framed the whole thing with long strips of brown interspersed with a few random patches. I pieced the back with some fabrics from the front, plus a big block of green and a big block of gold; unfortunately, some of the piecing was wonky here. Nervously, I started machine quilting with gold thread. I stitched a long wavy line from corner to corner of the patches; using that as my guide, I stitched on both sides until I ran into the frame. For the frame, I did concentric rectangles in brown thread. I bound the quilt in dark brown.
My satisfaction with the finished quilt was deepened by Kim's pleasure and excitement when I gave it to her. Truly I am dreaming in quilt designs these days because of all this. . .
See the dark green shirt pocket (usable!) patch below Kim's forearm?
13 comments:
Just beautiful!
YOU KNOW KIM????!!! Helloooooo, Kim!!!! It's so good/weird/wonderful to see you pop up on my computer screen first thing this morning! Blessings, hugs, thumbs-up and all that stuff...
And Margo, the quilt is LOVELY. Very cuddly and warm and tasteful. Lucky Kim.
This is stunning!! I really did get goosebumps all over just looking at the pictures. What beautiful, inspired work! You are most definitely an artist :-)
Absolutely gorgeous! I love it, and am so very impressed with how beautifully you crafted it. A job very well done!
Beautiful! I love it. The colors are so deep, and the patching is really inspired.
Love the pocket!
nice work margaret! lovely.
My goodness, that's beautiful! I love the pattern.
It's not the work of a novice. Lovely, artsy, and practical. Perfecto! (but please help me understand the pocket patch)
SE, sorry for not being clear! That dark green corduroy was a shirt from the thrift store that I cut into patches. So I amused myself by making the shirt pocket into a patch in the quilt and then quilting carefully around it so it's functional.
It's gorgeous. I absolutely love it. Nice work.
Margo, this is absolutely beautiful! It's inspiring me for my little crib quilt! I really love those big blocks in the back of the quilt! I hadn't thought about machine quilting myself; I was thinking of taking it somewhere to machine quilt, but I bet I could do it if I added a makeshift arm on my machine. Love that you quilted it with gold thread!
Oops, I didn't sign in correctly for my last comment. That was me:)
Daughter Fish, thank you! I was trying to communicate to you that quilts can be do-able. I didn't use an extra arm on my Bernina. What I did use and find extrememly useful for any bulky thing with layers: a walking foot. They're pricey as machine accessories go, but I shopped around and got one on ebay. I love it. If you go through my quilting label in this blog, you can see that I've machine quilted several quilts using very simple patterns that didn't require marking. You can do it! Good luck with your quilt!
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