Every other year, my local quilt guild has a show, and there is always a challenge project. It encourages people to create something special in a theme to share with the visitors. It often has restrictions as to size and other details.
My quilt for the challenge “Quilts speak volumes” is based on the book “A Ring of Endless Light “ by Madeleine L’Engle. I first read this book as a teenager and found I could relate to the main character’s problems as she dealt with growing up, moving, and the death of a beloved family member. This book is still an enjoyable, if emotional, read. I had the pleasure of hearing Ms. L’Engle speak while I was in college, and one of her main points, in both the book and her speech, was that we have a choice in how we respond to challenges, and that we should always strive to be “Light Bearers.” The name of my quilt, as well as the title of the book, comes from a poem by Henry Vaughan.
“I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it,
Time, in hours, days and years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world,
And all her train were hurled.”
The Design Process
The design of the quilt is based, in part, on a photograph of the Sombrero Galaxy taken in infrared by R. Kennicutt (Seward Observatory) from the NASA picture of the day website.
I started by choosing my background fabric. I wanted to use the blue version of the fabric, but I didn’t have enough of it. So I over-dyed the green to a deeper blue, then bleached the center to get the right effect.
When it came time for quilting, I had some ideas to add detail to the quilt, including dolphins which featured in the story. I always spend some time practicing my quilting before I work on a quilt, so I tried some different images before I was ready to work on the quilt.
To write the poetry in the border, I traced the letters onto a wash-away stabilizer. I stitched over the letters using the free-motion setting on my sewing machine, then washed away the stabilizer. The addition of a flanged border (the thin red line) to this quilt brought the red out to edges.
I embellished the quilt with ribbons, yarn, beads, Tinzl, and a fusible product called Angelina fibers.
This quilt definitely challenged my skills, but is one of my favorites.
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