A quilt for a very sad story

This is a quilt-story I’ve been anxious to share ever since I started making it. Now that the quilt is finished I can.

The pattern comes from a book by an Australian artist/quilter/writer, Kathreen Ricketson and the book, as you can see, is titled Brave New Quilts. I’ve had the book in my library for a few years and this year decided that before I donate it to the library, I should at least make ONE quilt from it.

Tragically, Kathreen and her partner died while snorkeling off the coast of Western Australia, (and just as the book was being released, as I understand, so that all proceeds of the sale of the book would go to help their two school-age children.) The initial reports were that they died of jellyfish stings while their children observed from the shore.  What unimaginable horror for them! But a coroner declared the deaths were by drowning. Here is a link to the newspaper report: Kathreen Ricketson’s death. 

Brave New Quilts is a beautiful and imaginative study in quiltmaking that also contains a mini Art History lesson in every chapter. The way she stages and photographs her quilts is just wonderful.  And her quilts illustrate so well each period that there are actually several I’d like to try my hand at, following her inspiration and instructions.

The quilt I chose first was from the period Art Nouveau, of which Gustav Klimt is perhaps the most famous artist. This is what Kathreen says about the color palette for her quilt, which she names, Peacock Blue. “Colors in this era were rich and luxurious and exotic. Peacock blues, purples, greens are synonomous with this era, as are gold and shades of bronze and silver.”  

(I guess, having grown up in India, it’s easy to see why I’d be drawn to a quilt referencing peacocks!)

So I started off using the same palette as she does — blues, greens and deep yellow/golds — for the long panel of half-square triangles (HSTs in quilting parlance.) And it was beautiful. But I simply could not resist adding some rich saturated orangey-pinks into my mix.  It was fun to use the method of making 8 pairs of HSTs that she recommends, which gets the job done pretty quickly. Only a very few of my triangle pairs had to be discarded because they came out too small.

I had a hard time selecting the background, or the “field”, on which to set the motif and triangles. Kathreen chose a silvery white. But since I’ve made a few quilts recently with white fields, I decided on a darker one.

Kathreen appliquéd peacock-feather shapes for her motif down one side. Not being an appliquér, I decided on irregular pieced stars for my motif.

I took the quilt to a new long-arm quilter in the neighborhood and I think the all-over design with variegated thread we chose together worked nicely on the quilt.

 I wanted so badly to bind it in one of the rich pinks … But I also did not want the dark field to appear hemmed in, preferring instead for the field to seem boundless. So that’s what I did, binding it in the same fabric as the blue-ish gray background.

The prints in my quilt are almost all from contemporary designers, including Tula Pink, Giuseppe Ribaudo (AKA Giucy Giuce),  Zen Chic and others. All are creating really gorgeous contemporary designs. Look them up if you’re curious.  The backing is a print by Crystal Manning.

My quilt was really difficult to photograph, which surprised me. It’s big, for one thing. 80″ X 80″.  I’m not super happy with the photos; I don’t feel they do the quilt justice and the colors don’t seem quite right.  I apologize. Guess I’ll have to hire a real photographer next time! Or buy a real camera.

But I am glad to have this quilt to remind me of Kathreen Ricketson. In fact it feels like a privilege for some reason. And I dearly hope her children are finding their way through life okay after witnessing such a horrifying tragedy.

I celebrate Kathreen Ricketson’s art and spirit with my quilt and I am grateful to her generosity in sharing her lovely vision with the world. I hope you’ll be inspired to check out her work and do the same.

(And now that I have written this, I realize I will NOT be donating her book to the library. I’ll be hanging on to it, for it is a treasure.)