imPerfect Points

I have a large pile of unfinished quilts, all works in progress, some of them urgent. So, naturally, for the last three weeks I have been largely ignoring them to work on something new.

For the last year, my daughter has been living in Alice Springs. It’s the town she was born in, but a long way from home now. During that time, my SiL, Googie Sultan, has stood in loco parentis. My other daughter and I are off to Alice Springs for a short holiday, so making a quilt for Googie suddenly became priority.

The feature fabrics in this quilt are designed by Reggie Sultan, an indigenous Australian artist. Reggie is the author of a book “An Uncontrollable Child. The autobiography of an Aboriginal artist“. He is also Googie’s brother. The fabrics in this quilt are Digging Water, Digging Witchetty Grubs, Digging Honey Ants and Morning Glory. All the fabrics are in green and orange.

I’ve teamed the feature fabrics with some green and yellow hand dyed fabric. I dyed these fabrics especially for this quilt, using Liquid Radiance. The background fabric is a black homespun. The block, of course is churn dash, set on point, a block I never thought I’d use. It reflects my obsession with secondary pattern, and resolving pattern repeats rather than letting them run end abruptly at the border.

Googie is a noted artist in her own right, and I have a small collection of  her paintings. I wanted the quilting to have a connection to her paintings, without plagiarising them. So the quilting design draws on both the motifs in Googie’s paintings, and traditional quilt motifs. Except the Witchetty Grubs in the corner. They’re pretty well a blatant rip.

As both Reggie’s fabrics and Googie’s paintings have a bush tucker theme, the name of the quilt had to be Bush Tucker.

I didn’t order enough of the backing fabric, so the back of the quilt is pieced too.

I quilted Bush Tucker with a lovely variegated grey thread by Signature (M90) and Gütermann Sulky in variegated orange (col 4006) and green (col 4020).

There are more photos of the quilt at my Flickr.

My daughter has taken some time off university and gone travelling. So all the stuff from Res (dorm, if you’re on the other side of the Pacific) has arrived home to be sorted, packed away or sent on. The bonus for me is that Stargazer, the quilt I made for her 18th birthday has come home, if only for a visit. Apart from the thrill of having it here, I get the chance to finally take some decent pictures of it.

Quilt of hand-dyed silk featruing a scene from the tomb of Nefertari depicting Maat petitioning Isis on behalf Nefertari.

At the time I made the quilt, Jeanne was studying Egyptology (she later switched to politics, but that’s another story), and I had just discovered the joys of fabric dyeing using Liquid Radiance. Now, that I think of it, this was a one-fabric quilt too. I bought a single length of silk fabric, white (the background fabric) and dyed all the pieces for the appliqué. I had decided to use the technique of applying the appliqué using raw-edge techniques, and stitching it through all layers after basting. I had used this technique on Jeanne’s Leaving the Nest quilt, made when she first went of to university. I later discovered Pam Holland’s Drappliqué technique, and incorporated pigment pens in making Stargazer.

The quilt depicts the much-reproduced image of Isis and Maat from the tomb of Nefertari. In the image, Maat kneels before the throne of Isis and petitions on behalf of Nefertari. Isis is the Goddess of Creation, associated with motherhood and fertility, protector of children. Maat’s name means ‘that which is straight’; she represents ethical principles of truth, justice, harmony, balance, cosmological order, reciprocity and propriety So, I think, the scene was an appropriate choice for the occasion.

Detail of Maat

Detail of Isis

In the original, Nefertari’s name is spelt out in the cartouche. But I tried to get creative with Egyptian hieroglyphs, and wrote my daughters name. One cartouche has Jeanne’s name and birthdate in hieroglyphs. In the other, I used both Egyptian hieroglyphs and symbols from Indigenous Australian iconography. The Egyptian hieroglyphs again spell out her name. The Aboriginal icons start with the symbol for a windbreak, to separate the two different symbol sets, followed by the symbol for a woman looking towards the symbol for a star. It is intended to mean ‘Aboriginal woman who looks at the stars’, a tribute to my daughter’s Aboriginal heritage, and her love of all things cosmological.

Cartouche using Egyptian hieroglyphs to spell out Jeanne's name and birthdate.

Cartouche using Egyptian hieroglyphs to spell out Jeanne's name, and Indigenous Australian iconography to represent 'Aboriginal woman who looks at the stars'.

The name of the quilt, Stargazer, is my nickname for my daughter (never to her face), and a reference to the stars painted on the ceiling of Nefertari’s tomb.

So, for the next few weeks, Stargazer is here for a visit. I get to look at it every day, take more photos of it – which I didn’t do before it went away last time, worry about the mistakes I find in it (spot all the places I put dark pieces under light in the appliqué), and generally enjoy having it here.

The ceiling of Nefertari's tomb is painted with five-pointed stars.

Just dipping my toe in the water, before I take the big plunge.