This one of a kind, handmade, art quilt was started about 4 years ago. While I was moving houses it stayed in a wardrobe until recently when I knew I had to finish her.
The story behind this quilt was quite amazing. I wanted to create a goddess quilt based on my own body map. I bought large sheets of cardboard and asked my housemate if he would trace me on the cardboard as I lay on it. Then I asked him to trace me in the foetal position as well. She is the dark figure at the bottom of the other figure. Then I created the woman/goddess from African and Aboriginal fabrics on a batik background.
She stands in front of a boab tree which has lots of birds and leaves in its branches. The boab tree flourishes in harsh conditions, dry conditions without water. For me this symbolized my demanding and physically exhausting job in aged care. I hand sewed about half of the quilt with blanket stitch and different coloured threads. The sewing became too difficult for me to do by hand as I got closer to the centre where there were more layers of fabric.
By this stage I had done a few fabric collages and free motion quilted them. I realized I could do the same with this quilt as there was no other way that I would be able to finish it. As luck would have it, the woman who quilted two of my recent quilts, allowed me to hire her very expensive and fabulous free motion quilting machine. I spent two long days quilting her with help from Sandra Kelly who runs and owns her own quilting business.
I finished her just days before my partner and I left on a 12 month trip around Australia in our campervan. The really amazing thing about her is that I designed her just months before I was diagnosed with an aggressive endometrial cancer, for which I had a hysterectomy at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle 4 years ago. I had placed a large moon where my uterus used to be. And there is a healing bird sitting over that same area on the woman in the foetal position. This was pointed out to me by my cousin in Finland.
Somewhere my body must have known what was coming and I created this quilt without consciously knowing anything about the cancer diagnosis I was about to receive. So I had to call her Moon Goddess, which I free motion quilted onto one of the seed pods of the boab tree. My signature is on another seed pod.
This quilt has had quite a healing presence in my life and I am so pleased I finally finished the journey of creating her for you.
