Kate's Quilt

I have attached a photo of a quilt that I entered in the Greater San Antonio Quilt Guild’s biennial quilt show last weekend. My quilt, “Crossing Borders”, won second place in the Art Quilt category, there is more…. But first, the “Crossing Borders” quilt journey:

Many years ago, maybe a couple of decades ago, I ruined a piece of beautiful black rayon with some type of bleach discharge (Jane, I may have done this in one of your classes; you have always been patient with me when I didn’t follow directions! Thank you).  My goal had been to make a large (maybe 2 or 3 yards) grid. Who knows, or remembers, what for!  The fabric fell (literally!) apart creating lots of black blocks with red and orange fringe, pretty much a failure. However, I could not throw away these blocks.  (Jane taught me that too.).  The black blocks were all sizes with (on a second look) incredible red and orange fringe!  So about 10 or 12 years ago, I attached  the blocks to a cotton background fabric with tons of basting stitches, and absolutely no plan!  I added the black cross stitches to secure all the blocks, again no plan. Then maybe seven years ago, I found some red, yellow and orange thread that my mother had given me before she passed in 2003. First spark, the threads reminded me of the colors used in some Central American flags, so I started adding red, yellow and orange cross stitches. Starting to think….. people fleeing their home countries around the world, crossing borders. I made small crosses for the young children crossing these borders…..more thinking.  I have a fascination with four-letter words.  I added 4-letter words that reflect what I can only imagine people leaving their home countries might experience (hope, fear); need (agua, food); and, face (rape, pain).  I did this in 2021-22, and the quilt was still not together-what was missing?  Earlier this year the Texas governor gave me a missing piece-barbed wire!    And, at last the $$ money fabric purchased recently for another project (or, maybe this one! some times you just don’t know what a piece of fabric will become.) just yelled at me….crossing borders is all about MONEY!!! A five-letter word! No or little money, war money, power money, drug money, the list goes on.  So a significant one and a half inch border/binding was added (with pains taking mitered corners too!). Done.

Now, back to the quilt show.  I also won the Judge’s Award!  There were two judges and each gets to pick one quilt out of the 200+ quilts that “she feels deserves a special acknowledgement for excellence, special interest, technique or merit.”  The judge, Cindy Erickson, stated on the critique sheet that the “raw edges, layering, verbiage, stamping, color shading, embroidery stitches all give the feeling of emotion, pain and loss.  I chose this because it captured my heart. So meaningful.”   I accomplished what I wanted to with this quilt!  

Thank you for hanging in there with me for this story, and with my cancer struggle.  I am doing well.  

Kate Martin