My quilting history

Yes, of course I’m busy being creative, problem is, most of what I’m working on is gifts, so I can’t share yet.  I realized, that since I’ve been quilting for over 30 years, I should share some of my older quilts. I went searching for my first quilt and I can’t find it!!! I’m a little disturbed by this, I can’t believe that I have thrown it away – it is very warn since we did use it for years,  but it is not something I would throw away.  Oh well, onto to another quilt.This was my inspiration. On a visit from Israel to the US I had seen an exhibit of the Book of Kells, the Celtic designs and their illuminated manuscripts were so foreign to anything I had seen before. I fell in love, I bought a book on the Book of Lindisfarne  and poured over every page.  This image really grabbed me, sure here it is the title page for the Gospel of Mark, but the lion has long been a Jewish symbol as well, and there were no crosses or other Christian symbols.  So off I went to make my masterpiece.I made this quilt 27 years ago, I finished it shortly before my youngest son was born.  Even though it has a water stain in the upper left corner – that just adds to it’s being special and loved. It has hung in every single home we have lived in, and there was leak behind it in one of the homes.  Of course I could wash it gently in my bathtub (no machine washing for this one), after almost 30 years I probably should. Not a bad job of recreating the image as a quilt.Sometimes it pays to tackle a project without rules.  I did my best to trace out the lion on one large piece of paper.  Then I went section by section doing a combination of paper piecing and appliqué.  Of course I have no pictures of the process, this was long before digital photography. At some point the lion was complete, then the tedious work of removing the paper started.  Btw, the background is simple muslin,  the quilts is 45″, the width of the fabric which did determine how I fit everything in.

Once I had my lion done, I figured out the placement of the red lines and the purple boxes. I made sure to figure out the placement of the words, Imago Leonis – image of the Lion.  I appliquéd the red bands down first, then I put the lion on top and appliquéd him down, finally, I needle turn appliquéd the words down.  I bought all of the fabrics on a visit to the US, at that time I never could have found any of those fabrics in Israel,  I’m very glad I chose both solids and what today we would call low volume. Back then it was simply quilting cottons.I didn’t skimp on any detail, if it was in the original image, I did my best to get it into the quilt.I didn’t stop there, it might have taken three months to create the quilt top, another seven to hand quilt the whole thing. Yes, I quilted in the ditch on the lion, I also used the quilting stitch to create the definition of toes, and then I filled the whole background with celtic swirls and keys and anything else that I found on the pages of my book.So sorry if I snigger when I see hand quilting that is large, done with embroidery thread and where each stitch is practically the size of a quarter of an inch.  After ten months of working on this, I made the label with cross stitch!  What was I thinking???  Also, one of the best names I ever came up with, naming is not my strong suit.

So now it hangs in my hallway, I must confess that I don’t really ‘see’ it all that much. Which is why just taking these few photos reminded me of how wonderful and labor intensive it really was.  And it has survived very very well.  I think I will take it down and wash it, and when I do, I’ll probably get some better quality photos.

I have made many quilts since, I hope to make many more, but this will always be my masterpiece. I’m fine with that, its ok to have my masterpiece done when I was young and simply continue to be creative.