If you follow my blog, you know I’ve been working on a Chakra Quilt series – to help myself work through some past emotional baggage.
I’ve been currently working on the Heart Chakra Quilt, and it has taken much longer than anticipated only due to the improv nature of the quilt – and me not knowing exactly how to create what I wanted to see. Making this quilt top created a lot of waste and as fabric costs have gone up, it just kills me to throw it away.
Thinking I could create a back for the Heart Chakra Quilt, I pieced together every bit of scrap I had from the front. The way I did it was to divide the pieces by size, or match two sides together that are exactly the same length. Then I just started sewing them together, chain piecing until I had no more pieces, or pieces that didn’t fit anything yet. I would try to add as many pieces as I could before needing to press and trim.
Once I had the smaller pieces put together, they started matching up with larger pieces, and I really just kept sewing onto each piece until one side got to 13″. Then I had about 30 blocks of varying heights, all with the same width of 13″ – from there, I could put them into rows and play with layout.
It was at this point I thought it looked cool enough that it should be its own quilt, so I made a much faster pieced backing from larger pieces, and added the green on the sides just to make it a bit wider on top and now I have a very unexpected quilt finish!! I’m calling it Little Pieces of My Heart.
Sewing is very meditative, and with these Chakra quilts, I give myself mantras to repeat while sewing to keep a certain mindfulness while creating. With this scrap quilt, I didn’t really have a specific practice – but I did think a lot about the children locked in cages with no one for emotional support. It tears me up inside what we are doing to other people. I say WE due to the fact it’s OUR tax dollars paying some private firm $750+ a day to keep kids in concentration camps.
This is future damage. We are creating future war and terrorism with this act alone (don’t get me started on global warming). So… I may be donating this quilt to try to either raise money for RAICES or giving directly to a child in need.
I love reading about scrappy quilt tops like this! How the intent changed enough to make it its own thing.