Mother: A Finished QAL Quilt

It's snowing this afternoon.  That's not really remarkable for a Tuesday in February here except that this winter is on track to be our least-snowiest ever (in contrast to last winter, which finished as the fourth-snowiest ever).  We also set a record high temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit just yesterday, so it's a pretty big overnight shift.  I'm not just talking about the weather because I'm in the Midwest and that's what we do, however.  I'm talking about it because it ties in to the theme of my recently completed quilt, Mother.

I will address the elephant in the room first: this is a square quilt.  It looks awkwardly shaped because the rectangle blocks aren't what you are used to seeing.  But if you get out a ruler and measure it, the quilt is in fact 60x60.  Moving on, this quilt is made from the Mother pattern designed by Taralee Quiltery for the Portland MQG as a quilt-along in 2021.  I was initially drawn to the teardrop shapes, which is one I have not created before.  When I decided to start this project, I was thinking more about the challenge of the shapes than the theme of the quilt.

Tara chose twelve crises facing Mother Earth and assigned one to each teardrop.  I kept her ideas the same but redesigned some of them (mostly to get rid of the appliqué).  Here is her list, with notes on the ones that I altered:

January - Health
February - Plant Life
March - Ocean Pollution (I added the barge)
April - Crimes Against Humanity (I used a handprint fabric instead of making my own)
May - Air Pollution
June - Polar Ice Caps
July - Animal Life (self-drafted FPP paw print)
August - Bees (I made a bee instead of a hexagon)
September - Hunger
October - Land Cultivation (I added the horizon line)
November - Housing (It's an Oz house!)
December - Increase (self-drafted FPP pattern to mimic her design)

This is a scrappy quilt.  With the exception of the handprint fabric I used for April, all of the fabrics came from my stash.  Even the back is a wideback that was bought for a different project and then not used.  It's a colorful almost-plaid, reminiscent of all the messy threads that hold our planet together.

The quilting was done by Lauren at Tekstil Crave with the Ikat #1 pantograph and I think it's brilliant - it is a cross between the teardrop shape and a raindrop.  I had a hard time picking the binding fabric because of all the different colors in the quilt top, but ended up going with a tone-on-tone black Blossom print.

While I can't say I'm happy about climate change or the other issues highlighted in this project, I am happy to finally have finished it almost exactly three years after I started it.  This quilt seemed a little too meaningful to be tossed into the general family room pile so instead it has been entered into consideration for a quilt show later this year.  I will certainly be posting about it if it is accepted!