Sari Quilts

"The world is madly beautiful and art is the alchemy." Sara

In a 12-hour space, turtles have appeared twice in my world in some fashion, so I await the third visit. The enchanting Peggy Markel, global culinary adventuress and wonderful writer, took this photograph, below, of two old and beautiful creatures in the Italian countryside. 

In Native American lore, Turtle Medicine bridges earth and water, what is "real" and what is imagined. Turtle is a nurturer and protector. From this site: If you have Turtle medicine, you value both the power of the earth, the waters of the earth, and the magic of the heavens, for Turtle symbolizes both the grounding quality of earth energy, and the magic of the mystical.

I've been light on textiles lately, but I want to share these vintage sari quilts from the Sundance catalog. Now, I think I'm fairly immune to marketing eye candy, but I am pretty much a slave to the mystic-cowboy/cowgirl Sundance aesthetic, and a new catalog is always a gift. (And I say slave lightly - I generally don't care for the language of addiction and disempowerment, for lack of a better word, in art and craft conversation. But that's another post.)

Anyway. The jewelry, the furniture, the leather, the carefully edited artisan goods - being a buyer or designer for Sundance would be a dream job, and living with some of these objects would be so lovely. The collection of sari quilts uses vintage cotton fabrics and the pieces are hand-stitched in India:

Sundance is also offering some unusual patchwork rugs. This one is made from Turkish carpets:

The catalog also has a red patchwork kilim rug that's very beautiful.

There's also this lovely Jaipur quilt hand-stitched in Rajasthan:

These are modern constructions, not the same as the patchworks you see at Sri Gallery, for example. But they're simply wonderful to look at.

Comments

[Catherine Anderson]

It's the only catalog I look forward to receiving! I just got one today and when I went to order the Gudari quilt (queen) they were already on backorder. I couldn't even pay for it in my shopping cart...Sundance site wouldn't let me. After a few phone calls, I hopefully got to the right person at Sundance. Robin in Customer Service. She was very helpful and took my order over the phone (which I couldn't even do in a previous call) and she pretty much assured me that I would get one! I'm ordering things for my new cabin where I'm setting up my art studio and this quilt is thee most gorgeous quilt I've ever seen!! I have students coming in from all over the world to study art with me and they will be staying in the cabin...so I'm really looking forward to getting this quilt! Thanks!

[Heather]

Glad to hear that someone else has the same Sundance obsession.

[Cornelia]

I love the Sundance catalogue as well and am looking forward to the day that I have my own income to splurge on something like those sari quilts you wrote about. Buying one will be my equivalent of saving the first dollar(s) that I make with my social work degree!
I also love turtles and really appreciate your sharing the picture. The way I see them is that they are connecting, even if they don't stop and meet face-to-face...Like the two of us in DC: Even if we hadn't met in person, from my perspective, we had already connected! Namaste!

[Karen]

I tore off the front cover and pulled out the pages with the sari quilts as soon as I got my catalog today! I especially liked the cover so you could see all the stitching up close.

[Mal*]

We'll miss you -- enjoy the last week of April!