An Indian Log Cabin

 
Poets use words to express their emotion. Quilters use fabric, color, and design. Returning home from India, my head was full of colors - the colors we saw in the flowers, the saris, the landscape, the food. As I was assembling fabrics I wanted to use, I knew that gold had to be at the heart of this design. And I had some smaller pieces that just needed to be used. So I went to one of my favorite blocks, the log cabin. This quilt is the result.

Originally I was going to keep this quilt and back it with a piece of stamped fabric I got in Jaipur. But as I was assembling the 48 blocks of this quilt, Jeff Cylkowski made a visit to my studio. He was a child when we lived next door to his family in the mid-1980'a, and was a 3rd grader when his mom Linda died. Jeff went to high school in Pennsylvania and Indiana and then went to the West Coast to skateboard and breakdance. He also began doing graffiti. With the realization that he needed to formalize his art education, he moved to the East Coast and got a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and has been doing interesting things ever since. He is spending this summer in Philadelphia where he wrote a grant for the Asian Arts Initiative and curating a multi-media arts exhibit.

I am used to people liking my work, but Jeff saw this quilt and used his art vocabulary about this quilt - depth, opticality, movement, impressionism. At his sister Michelle's wedding in 2006 Jeff and I talked about exchanging art. Since then I have made his sister not only a wedding quilt but recently a quilt for her baby Camille. So Jeff has been on my list. And now I knew what to make for him - something similar to this quilt.

And that's when things began to take shape. Not only did this quilt not belong in my house, there was no way I could duplicate this quilt, partly because of the emotion that went into this but also because I used up the end bits of several terrific fabircs. This quilt became Jeff's quilt.

It's finished and ready to ship to Jeff when he returns to Brooklyn. It contains not only some of the emotions from when I returned from India, it also holds memories of Jeff's childhood and his family.

A Cultural Mix

The colors of India are so vivid and still running through my mind. I've been thinking a lot about colors and design. And my scrap stash is overflowing. One scrap quilt that I loved and gave away was a log cabin design. So I'm putting the colors in India into a Log Cabin quilt.
Log Cabin designs are time-consuming. This one will have 48 blocks, and each block has 13 pieces. But there is such a terrific payoff. A traditional log cabin has a red center (symbolic of the hearth/heart/fire of a house). However the center of these blocks will be gold. These gold centers will be surrounded by scraps from three color families - red/oranges, purple/indigos, and green/blues. The back of the quilt is going to be a piece of hand-stamped fabric that I bought in Jaipur - it's 86" by 108".

A Quilt of India

Travel mates Cynthia and Richard from San Diego provided some great companionship as we toured India and Nepal. Cynthia bought 6 embroidered t-shirts in Nepal, and we began to talk about turning them into a quilt. She then gave me artistic license to do what I wanted with them. I've told people that India stimulated all our senses, and in this quilt I've incorporated the colors of the marigolds, the fruit, the saris, and the ubiquitous bougainvillea.

The back of the quilt is pieced from a whole cloth I bought in Jaipur (while everyone else was being introduced to Old Monk Rum during a carpet demonstration). Jaipur is famous for its Amber Fort and hand-stamped fabrics. For some reason I bought two big hand-stamped pieces. I knew I wanted to turn one into a whole cloth quilt and didn't quite know why I bought a second one. As I started Cynthia's quilt, it occurred to me what a perfect backing this would make. Cynthia and Richard are nature enthusiasts and have a fondness for elephants. Check out the detail on the back of the quilt.

I am used to making lovely things and then parting with them. However, parting with this quilt will be difficult. My comfort is knowing that the quilt will be in a place that we will visit! 64" x 88"

 

For Carolella and Stan

 
Carolella and Stan Trappe from Panama City, Florida, were part of the group we traveled with to India and Nepal. Carolella became a lifesave on this trip. Just as we got to Nepal, tragedy struck. I was standing at the window of our hotel room in Kathmandu, about to take a picture of the Himalayan foothills. I snapped, and nothing happened. Sniff sniff. My 8-year old Kodak digital camera died, and we still had 3 more days of travel. Here's where Carolella comes in. They travel with several cameras and loaned me one! The day we were leaving Nepal to head back to Delhi and the US, Carolella gave me a disk with the 177 photos I had taken in Nepal. SWEET! In exchange I suggested she get a t-shirt and let me turn it into a wall hanging. It just went in the mail today. A very fair trade.

And here's the embarrassing PS to this story: My memory card was full. I thought 512 MB meant I had 512 pictures to take. My camera registered that I had another 150 pictures left, which was obviously wrong. So, lesson learned is to travel with a spare memory card.

Home from India

 
Here John and I are at the Palace of the Winds in Jaipur, India. Our travels through Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Kujaraho, Varanasi, and Kathmandu were the opportunity of a life time. We're still recovering from jet lag and trying to make sense out of all that we saw and experienced. The architecture and the colors are great inspiration for future projects. Current projects? A wall hanging from a t-shirt for fellow traveller Carolella who loaned me a camera the last few days of the trip (I'm embarrassed to tell her that my memory card was full, which I didn't discover until I got home.) And for Cynthia and Richard a lap quilt from 6 t-shirts they bought on the trip. I also have a quilted jacket on the design table. Quilter/buddy Wayne and his mother-in-law picked a terrific palatte, and I'm eager to get started on it.

Maybe I'll give myself a few more days before I get busy... Jet lag gets worse the older you get...

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wedersehen, Goodbye

 
We leave for India tomorrow. And so we had a farewell dinner with the big kids and the grandkids. Much to my delight, the grandkids went along with my idea of bringing 3 facts about India to the dinner table (in exchange for their Valentine Day cards). One fact mentioned 3 times is that India's film industry is the largest in the world. Young Ben drew a picture of the flags of India and Nepal. A most delicious and informative dinner. From left to right, Ben, Sammy, Ryan, Jack, Brandon, Nikki, Natalie. Check out the 2nd picture for a more normal picture of Ben although Brandon, thanks to Jack, is invisible.