Dreamtime

Hello friends! What do you make of this curious fabric? A friend sent it to me as a souvenir of her recent trip “Down Under.”

It’s an Australian aboriginal print featuring witchetty grubs, honey ants, snakes, lizards, and other symbols of indigenous culture--in other words, not my typical quilting fare.

I’d seen distinctive prints like this (African fabrics, Kaffe Fassett florals) successfully used in quilts before, generally to showcase a collection of designs. —a “more is more” approach to design. In my case

Ultimately, I maintained the integrity of the piece by keeping the fabric intact. Who am I kidding... I couldn't bear to cut it up! Instead, I framed the piece with a sawtooth border made of even brighter colors. 

I tried adding pieced blocks but they only made the quilt look busier. So, I pieced together the Broken Dishes blocks I had made and put them on the back of the quilt.

The machine quilting was a lot of fun to do. I stitched random wavy lines with a variety of threads. It not only added great texture but contributed to the freeform style.

Dreamtime
16” x 23”
© DJB, 2003