Hot on the heels of the burning quilts was this one, a cooler, icier, calmer quilt. Raven black is my dye of choice, which yields a beautiful (in my opinion) midnight blue. The sky was coming back to blue; the air quality finally good for many days in a row. I gulped fresh air and reveled in the smells of fog, ocean breeze, flowers, pancakes, lemon freshener, and cut grass. I wished for more.
I had dip-dyed a piece a couple of months ago and wanted to work with that, or half of it, as it turns out. I cut it into strips and slid the strips up and down to disrupt the line. Part of that dye session I had crumpled and tie-dyed some cotton flannel and some cotton velvet as well. The flannel had areas that looked like plants or ice crystals, and I lay those over the strips; the squares then looked like windows.
Then the title came to me. But because of all the straight lines I knew I wanted to quilt in a circle or globe, what turned out to be a variant of a star. We always associate stars with points, but these are round, star-globes. White embroidery first, then the blues. The inner border is from a rolled and dyed cloth bundle of sticks from last year.
A few pieces of Japanese woven cloth (I discovered it is referred to as "taupe" fabric) crept in for variety.
I had some clear/white/silver seed beads, and after making Big Fires Start Small, I was interested in continuing to add beads to my work.
Wishing Stars
20"w x 46"h (51 cm x 117 cm)
Hand-dyed cotton, flannel, velvet and linen, taupe fabric, cotton thread, seed beads
hand embroidered and machine quilted
Wishing for a better year.
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