majestic beasts

 

Well the York Heritage Quilters Show in November was, once again, wonderful.  Great colours, innovations, but many classic beauties too.  This was my entry for the show. 

As always, I am talking about connections, and how it is so important to be supported by a mother's love.

 

This project grew from the pink circle out.  I had embroidered many of these circles, absolutely convinced that I would one day, find a good home from them.  I have become very attached to my hand embroidery projects.  Love the slowing down and thoughtful placements that doing hand embroidery provides.  One day I looked at this circle and decided it was the eye of an elephant.  Then the quilt grew from there.

this was my artist statement for the show.

 

From this angle, you can see that the ear of the mama  is added on her body, it was stitched and quilted separately.  The hope was to create interesting dimension.  I did this with her tusk too, as well as the babe's ear.

 

All the hand stitching onto the hand dyed fabric was done first.  Then the quilt was assembled.  Then the free motion quilting was done afterwards. 

 

Onto the background fabric I attempted to create a secondary pattern with the free motion stitching, placing the elephants into a fantastic field of flowers.

 

another view.  This work is large for me.  Its final size is 62 " long and 44 " wide.

 

within Mama's body, in amongst the hand stitching lines, I did free motion with the machine, and I tried to create a different pattern in every space.

 

Elephants are such majestic animals.  They are very caring parents and loyal to their families, staying within their family grouping until they die.  They help each other when there is distress and express great emotion if there is tragedy.  To imagine that any human would feel justified in hunting them for consumer consumption is horrific.