Quilt Border Making, December 2

Greetings Quilters!

We'll be meeting next Sunday, December 2, from 1-5pm, to continue the quilt-making process for the Middle East Dialogue Quilt. Please join us for an afternoon of conversation and quiltwork at 1531 Cambridge Street, Cambridge.

You can learn more about the project, see the mandalas and the completed center, as well as a "sampler" for the border at http://dialoguequilt.blogspot.com .

This step will be creating this border, the "chain of quilts" reaching all around the center design, and the final step will be to quilt all the layers together and prepare it for hanging in the Friends Meeting House.

We'll also be meeting for the last time on Sunday, December 16, from 1-5pm at The Pluralism Project, 1531 Cambridge Street, Cambridge.

We would love to have your presence at any of these meetings to continue this inspiring work so that it can be completed by the end of the year and sent to Ramallah. No quilting experience is necessary--only enthusiasm and friendship!

Please RSVP if you can attend, and let us know if you will bring any guests!

Invitation to the completion!

Greetings Quilters!

Many of you worked with us in February for design and dialogue about a
Middle East Dialogue Quilt. After a long hiatus, the center portion
of the Middle East Dialogue Quilt has been completed!

The next step will be creating this border, the "chain of quilts"
reaching all around the center design, and the final step will be to
quilt all the layers together and prepare it for hanging in the
Friends Meeting House.

We'll be meeting to work on the border and completing the quilt on these days:

Sunday, November 11, from 1-5pm
Sunday, December 2, from 1-5pm
Sunday, December 16, from 1-5pm

at The Pluralism Project, 1531 Cambridge Street, Cambridge.

We would love to have your presence at any of these meetings to
continue this inspiring work so that it can be completed by the end of
the year and sent to Ramallah. No quilting experience is
necessary--only enthusiasm and friendship.

Please RSVP if you can attend, and let us know if you will bring any guests!

Progress!

We are ready for the next community step!

The center portion of the quilt top is complete. (Aside from trimming threads.) In the picture, there's some of the muslin backing visible at top and bottom, but that will eventually be covered by the border. The tree in the center is an olive tree. The fabric comes from all over--most of it was donated by kind souls working on the project, but a little of it was specially ordered (none of the shades of green I had on hand were right for the leaves) and a bit more of it comes from my own fabric stash (the pool of water has a bit of my wedding dress fabric).


This is a detail of one of the two cities in the upper corners of the archway:


and a detail of the tears/drops of water that fall from the flames.


The next step is the creation of the border! I have put together a sample for what I imagine it will look like. From panel to panel, the different silhouettes keep a path of exchange going around the quilt. As one receives, so she gives in the next panel.



My hope is that the next group we have will help create this border, putting a little of themselves into the silhouettes. Then we will have our "Chain of Quilts", our "Quilters Without Borders" that surround the message of peace and hope in the middle.

From design to reality

The quilt is heading quickly towards completion.


Right now, the sky, land, and initial greenery are stitched down, and I'll spend tomorrow adding the water and the trunk of the olive tree. Little by little, it's coming together.



I'm anxious to finish this stage and move on to the communal finishing part. The border, which features the "passing it on" motif, the leaves of the olive tree, and the actual quilting-all-the-layers will be shared between any group or individual who wants to join in.

Sketch, first draft

Progress has been very slow; Spring Break didn't provide the work time I was hoping for, and I might have to push back completion time as a result. However, I do have a coherent sketch and plan for the quilt itself. This is the general overview here.

It's as if you're seeing through an arch in a wall, or through a doorway. Up in the corners of the arches are two cities, black and red, seized with suffering and fire. From them falls tears or blood. But the tears fall into a spring that nourishes not only the green growing around it, but the olive tree in the center.



This is an idea of what I'd like the border to be, instead of the plain blocks sketched above. The figures will be more detailed and less stick-figure, I think. What I like is that the continuity of color from one 'scene' to the next makes it look like a filmstrip. Blue passes something to brown; brown passes it to pink, who passes it to purple, who passes it to green...This is the "chain" extending around the world and around the quilt.











This is another sketch of the tree. I'm going to use as many different greens as I can for the leaves and the green growing area around the spring, while keeping the water and the background as spare as possible. The things that grow from our tears are so vivid and varied.

Synthesizing the Design: Initial Thoughts

I'm working now on trying to integrate the different ideas from the mandalas and the brainstorming session, and I keep reaching two conclusions:

1. The mandalas are beautiful and should be united with the self-portraits.
2. The main quilt can't include all the mandalas and self-portraits and still be the right size for the wall.

I think that the solution for this is simultaneously very simple and a lot of work:
two quilts!

The first one will be made from the mandalas and the self-portraits, as a kind of signature from all the work of the dialogue meeting. These beautiful mandalas should be sent as part of the project, even if I can't figure out how to integrate everything in them into one design.

The second one will be the "actual" quilt, designed with the space in mind: 7' high, 9' wide, with slightly muted colors to harmonize with the interior of the Center. It'll be a large scene--sketches forthcoming--that works with these ideas: tears, free flowing water, nourishing green growing things, people living side by side, people passing on inspiration, transformation, broken barriers, and an olive tree.

Right now, I think the border will be a variant of the Walkaround pattern, which will represent both "living side by side" and "a chain of hope, passing into the future."

The center portion is tougher. I've sketched and resketched it several times now, but I think I'm coming closer. An olive tree grows above a pool of water, nourished by two flowing streams. It'll be framed by an arch, as if it were an opening in a wall or a scene from under a bridge. The arch will have silhouettes of two cities--probably in reds and oranges--from which tears of rain fall into the main scene, into the two streams.

I'll try and get a sketch up this weekend. Please comment and critique this idea!

The Dialogue Meeting

The first part of creating the Middle East Dialogue Quilt was held on February 11, 2007, in the Braun Room of Harvard Divinity School's Andover Hall. A great group of people showed up to talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict, to brainstorm ideas for the quilt, and to think together about what messages we could send to the Friends Meeting House in Ramallah.

It went beautifully! After introductions, we began by making fabric self-portraits as a way of getting used to working with the fabrics and of introducing ourselves in a novel fashion. We split into five discussion groups and began addressing how the Israel-Palestine conflict had affected us, how we reacted to the events happening there, and what kind of images and messages we would want to put into this quilt. The list included:

Transformation
Symbols from the three Abrahamic religions
The Light Within/Inner Light of the Quaker tradition
Clothing remnants built into a bodily reminder of the violence and loss
A shoe; either as a remembrance of someone lost or as a sign of walking on a path
Fragments of both cultures making a whole
Weaving peace from war
A pebble falling into a pond, casting ripples outward
Images of someday, ourselves or our grandchildren going to Ramallah
A chain of inspiration; a chain of quilts around the world
"Quilters Without Borders"
Two cities, Boston and Ramallah; Tel Aviv and Ramallah
A fist
An open hand
Tipping point
Strength in communities; birds feeding their young
Israelis and Palestinians living side by side
Children playing together and embracing
Hands and arms reaching out to each other and to the viewer
Broken hearts
Tears--or blood drops--flowing into freely running water, which nourishes green growth
Trees growing in the desert
Connections
Open roads
A new generation
Fire of hope and water of tears
Voice, speaking, seeing

With those images in our minds, we went to work on the fabric. Five mandalas were created together, weaving these ideas into images of brilliance and sadness.

Now it's my task as the lead quilter to synthesize these designs, to draw together the ideas in these mandalas into a single quilt for Ramallah. Not an easy task--especially when the mandalas themselves are each so full of meaning and beauty!

The Creative Process in Action!

Mandalas from the Dialogue Meeting

This mandala worked with the broken (but mending) hearts theme, as well as the flowing water and growing plants. The doors on the corners are visions into the blue skies of the future.
This group wanted to show peaceful living side-by-side, so the outer part of the mandala features an Israeli girl and a Palestinian girl together in a neighborhood with homes, trees, and water. The inner circle has mosques, churches, and symbols for synagogues, and the outer corners have the books of the Abrahamic faith traditions.
Here's a detail of this mandala--the butterflies aren't as visible on a large scale!
This one I worked on! We have hearts mending as they come to the center, the Inner Light flowing out, and small drops that could be tears or leaves showing transformation. There's also large figures leading to smaller ones--ourselves or our children in the future--and bright pink dancing figures of sheer joy.
Traveling with this mandala meant the beautiful flame in the center was somewhat crumpled by the time I got it home. But the glowing, mended hearts and the fire and water were untouched.
Here the transformation took place from an inner light to blue streams, and hearts that were hopeful but still wept blood. This is probably the boldest and most dynamic of the lot--and its makers were eager to see it completed!

Fabric Self-Portraits from the Dialogue Meeting

Boston Globe coverage of the Dialogue

Rich Barlow of the Boston Globe wrote a beautiful article about our meeting on February 11th!

The Original Proposal

“During the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, I and my friends reacted to the destruction and loss of life with sorrow, frustration, anger, and despair. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do—there barely seemed to be any way to even talk about the conflict. Keeping silent made us feel even more powerless. I looked for a way to bring people together to talk openly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was inspired by the recent Faith Quilts Project and its ability to form communities around collaborative quilting. The Dialogue Forum and the Public Conversations Project supported the idea, and the result was the Middle East Dialogue Quilt.”

--Lead Quilter Emily Ronald

Mission:

To use the art form of collaborative quilting to design and build a quilt around the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Initial design of the quilt will involve a dialogue between members of many communities, and construction will be shared among all these groups. This use of hands-on work will inspire conversation on many levels, providing a means of discussing the conflict while focusing on a group project. The quilt, which will be donated to the Friends Meeting House in Ramallah, is intended to be both a visual expression of hope and a message from people of many diverse communities.

The development of the quilt is a three-part process of design, basic construction, and group collaboration.

The design stage happens in a dialogue meeting, which will involve both an introduction to the idea of collaborative quilting and a discussion of important matters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Participants are invited to come from a variety of religious, social, and activist communities. Over the course of the dialogue, participants will suggest design elements for the quilt, and will brainstorm more communities that would be interested in participating in the quilt’s construction.

Basic construction of the quilt is the responsibility of the Lead Quilter, who will integrate the suggested design elements into a single design which allows for community participation in its final construction, and prepare the quilt itself for community stitching.

During the group collaboration, the Lead Quilter will bring the quilt to interested communities. In this series of meetings, participants will have the opportunity to cut, glue, stitch, and otherwise complete the design of the quilt. At this stage, anyone can participate regardless of sewing experience. Work on the quilt will be accompanied by discussion of what the design means: a message of hope, peace, justice, understanding, etc., as determined in the initial design stage. Communities will have a chance to discuss what their own stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict means, and to join in a project shared by people with diverse backgrounds and opinions.

The final result will be both concrete and intangible: a finished work of art, a series of collaborations and discussions, and an online record of the full process. The completed quilt will be displayed before being sent to Ramallah.