Morgan and Momoy

Today is reveal day for our Latitudes Quilts group.  The theme for the latest challenge was "leave your mark".  I admit to being stumped; I struggled with how I wanted to represent "leaving my mark".  Each time I considered the theme, I came back to this thought: the greatest mark I'll leave on this Earth is my children.  They will be here after I'm gone.  Hopefully, they will be good people, responsible global citizens, and loving partners and parents.  That's the greatest legacy I can leave.

Morgan and Momoy 

With that in mind, I created this piece based on a drawing my youngest did when she was nursery school, celebrating the marks she made.  I have it framed and hanging in my studio and I smile every time I see it.  The color selections of my quilt are taken from what she drew, right down to the faded small figure.... and the spelling mistake.  (I love that spelling mistake and am so thankful her teachers didn't intervene to correct her!)  My first intent was to recreate the drawing with embroidered stitch, but I had a hard time recreating the spontaneity of the drawing.  Perhaps I just didn't leave enough time to solve that problem.  In the end, I  mimicked her crayon drawn line with paint.  I used my left hand so the lines weren't as sure.  It seemed to make a difference.  

In creating the piece, I took the "leaving your mark" theme one step further with my fabrics.  In our group discussions, some of our members have been talking about using only things from our stash.  I wanted to do that, but didn't have a good fabric for the center panel.  A piece of hand dyed fabric seemed a perfect solution, but powdered dyes make me a bit uncomfortable and I doubt I'll ever use them.  However, I like the idea of going to my garden and harvesting fodder for dyes.  As a result, I used a piece of fabric I dyed with onion skins to be ecologically-minded.  Every small step towards a cleaner Earth, I hope, makes a difference.  I'm hoping to explore eco-dyeing further this summer with India Flint's Eco Colour book in hand.  

I didn't think the piece lent itself to intricate or complex quilting and I struggled with my options.  I considered and discarded embroidered running stitches in the paint, echo quilting, and all-over meander quilting because I felt that, in one way or another, these options would detract from the simplicity of the drawing.  In the end, I hand sewed a few crosses in a very large grid to hold the whole thing together and called it a day.  

Please head over to the Latitude Quilts blog to see all the other interpretations of the theme.