REINCARNATION
2023
40″ x 40″
Cotton, nylon tulle, vintage recycled textiles: ticking, feed sack, antique Japanese katazome, kasuri, denim, raw silk,
remnant from great-grandmother’s scrap collection, machine pieced, hand paper-pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted
Photo Credit: Adi Talwar
I was inspired by M. C. Escher’s lithograph, Reptiles. When I read that some viewers of this 1943 artwork considered it a representation of reincarnation, I thought about the new, altered life that is given to vintage textiles when I incorporate them in a quilt. In Reptiles, lizards crawl off a sketchbook page, make a circular path, experience life, and ultimately, they return to the page.
In my quilt, I exchange the lizards for turtles, and they crawl off a mattress of ticking fabric. The antique katazome turtles, which were cut from fabric that was probably a futon cover, travel a path that ends in a new life as a quilt.
Reincarnation emphasizes the hexagonal shape in Escher’s tessellated lizards, the design on a turtle’s shell, and Grandmother’s Flower Garden traditional patchwork. The quilt also combines contemporary fabric with fabric that my mother and great-grandmother used.
