I have made quilts that have taken years to make. The first quilt I ever made took two full years of regular work because it was completely handmade – hand pieced, hand quilted, the seam in the backing sewn by hand, and hand-bound. I’ve also had quilts that have taken years because I got started on them and then put them away for a long time. That is the case with this quilt.
I started working on Arabesque #4 in April of 2016, and by the summer I had the top done and was beginning to quilt. But, in June of 2016, I began my Victims Quilt Project and I put this quilt on-hold for a long time. In April of this year, having caught up on making Victims Quilts, I picked Arabesque #4 up, dusted it off, and finally finished it.
The tile design for this quilt is based on a star tile from the Capella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily from the book Islamic Geometric Patterns by Eric Broug. The quilt is machine-pieced and machine-quilted and the blue stars and green crosses are each made from a single piece of fabric. (i.e. I cut out an 8-pointed star rather than piecing together a square and triangles.)
I decided to name this quilt “Stone Eden” because the inspiration tile was made from stone (of course) and the fabrics that I chose have botanical designs in them, making them reminiscent of a garden. I also quilted botanical designs in the star and cross blocks. It is an homage to the farm where I grew up, which was named “Stone Eden” by my grandmother in 1938.
