For a few years my memory quilt made with three photo taken trekking in the Nepalese subkingdom of Mustang, hung in my entry hall. When I decided to replace it with the Mongolia memory quilt, I looked at it seriously and decided it needed much more quilting. As I wrote a while ago, our eyes get used to different things. Heavy quilting is IN and I've begun to like the look even though I can't do free motion quilting on my trusty but ancient sewing machine. I decided I should add much more quilting. And I have been doing that for three days in the limited quilting time I've had. I forget how labor intensive each step of quilting is, how much time it takes. So this took much longer than I wished but such work can't be hurried. The before is above, the after is here -- just a small section.
And below is the whole quilt. It is not one of the most beautiful, I tried to use the colors of Mustang but I could have done a better job of balancing them, I think. Still there are ascending pictures of me on the trail -- all taken on one of the last days when we crossed four pases before lunch! A day I remember with great vividness each time I look at this quilt I'm terrificly proud of myself for doing this in my sixties! I was the slowest, almost always the last on the trail, but I did it and possibly loved doing it more than any of the younger whippersnapers The picture at the top shows me on a pass with a string of prayer fllags about my head. The mountains in the distance are the Annapurnas [3rd highest in the world], we walked with them in view all day -- so beautiful!
Those are real prayer flags across the top. One day as I left my building quite early in the morning, they were literally lying on the sidewalk in front of the door of the building. I thought that was auspicious so I picked them up and kept them. As a note of interest: when I saw prayer flags in Tibet and learned they are called "wind horses" [and many, like these, are stamped with images of horses, a well as with prayers in Tibetan script] I found it difficult to understand how the Tibetans, in their mountainous country had chosen a horse symbol. Horses are pretty useless in thosee mountains, yaks are much more adequate beasts. But eventually I realized that in that huge country [of which I saw only a tiny bit] there are also wide plains. And I learned that Tibet may have been invaded a few times by horse-riding peoples and that horses are prized possessions, once of only the wealthy. So, horses with all their romance that flat-landers have associated with them, strength, nobility, speed, if imagined to be at home in the sky would be fine bearers of prayers to the heavens and throughout the world.
For a few years my memory quilt made with three photo taken trekking in the Nepalese subkingdom of Mustang, hung in my entry hall. When I decided to replace it with the Mongolia memory quilt, I looked at it seriously and decided it needed much more quilting. As I wrote a while ago, our eyes get used to different things. Heavy quilting is IN and I've begun to like the look even though I can't do free motion quilting on my trusty but ancient sewing machine. I decided I should add much more quilting. And I have been doing that for three days in the limited quilting time I've had. I forget how labor intensive each step of quilting is, how much time it takes. So this took much longer than I wished but such work can't be hurried. The before is above, the after is here -- just a small section.
And below is the whole quilt. It is not one of the most beautiful, I tried to use the colors of Mustang but I could have done a better job of balancing them, I think. Still there are ascending pictures of me on the trail -- all taken on one of the last days when we crossed four pases before lunch! A day I remember with great vividness each time I look at this quilt I'm terrificly proud of myself for doing this in my sixties! I was the slowest, almost always the last on the trail, but I did it and possibly loved doing it more than any of the younger whippersnapers The picture at the top shows me on a pass with a string of prayer fllags about my head. The mountains in the distance are the Annapurnas [3rd highest in the world], we walked with them in view all day -- so beautiful!
Those are real prayer flags across the top. One day as I left my building quite early in the morning, they were literally lying on the sidewalk in front of the door of the building. I thought that was auspicious so I picked them up and kept them. As a note of interest: when I saw prayer flags in Tibet and learned they are called "wind horses" [and many, like these, are stamped with images of horses, a well as with prayers in Tibetan script] I found it difficult to understand how the Tibetans, in their mountainous country had chosen a horse symbol. Horses are pretty useless in thosee mountains, yaks are much more adequate beasts. But eventually I realized that in that huge country [of which I saw only a tiny bit] there are also wide plains. And I learned that Tibet may have been invaded a few times by horse-riding peoples and that horses are prized possessions, once of only the wealthy. So, horses with all their romance that flat-landers have associated with them, strength, nobility, speed, if imagined to be at home in the sky would be fine bearers of prayers to the heavens and throughout the world.
No comments :
Post a Comment