Festival of Quilts 2017 – episode 3

This quilt is entitled ‘India’. At the Festival of Quilts it was entered in the Quilter’s Guild Challenge. This year the challenge title was ‘Free’. It is 70 years since India became an independent nation and this quilt is made of 70 squares. India is the largest democracy in the world.

In January this year I accompanied my husband to Chennai to take part in a conference organised by CUAC (Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion).  The conference theme was ‘Identity and Diversity’.

Between sessions, we drank tea and coffee in an outdoor shelter made of beautiful cotton fabric.

The fabrics for the quilt were bought in a store in Chennai called ‘Kumaran Silks’, a marvellous place with floor after floor of fabrics.

We were in Southern India just before the big Pongal festival (due to begin on 14 January 2018), so many customers were choosing new saris for the celebration.

Pongal is a harvest festival in Tamil Nadu which falls in mid-January each year and last for four days. The meaning of  Pongal is spilling over – there is a tradition of boiling rice in a pot until it spills over.

I went up to the top floor to buy my cottons by the yard – there were plenty to choose from!

On the quilt I added a ‘jewel’ to mark each of the major cities and the main rivers were added too. I made my quilt with a longing that India would always be a tolerant modern democracy.

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This is my ‘Little Leaf – pink’ fabric. You can find it here.

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