One-of-a-Kind Wildlife Quilt

Wildlife Quilt (Patricia Ferrebee, 2019), mixed cotton textiles

By accident, this week ended up being parti-color snake week.  I am very much ok with this outcome–especially since the brilliant reptiles brighten up a dull and depressing part of the year while at the same time they are still safely in brumation and we don’t have to worry about accidentally stepping on them (at least here in Brooklyn). Anyway, to wrap up the week, I thought I would show you this exceedingly lovely quilt which my mother made for me.  It is a wildlife quilt which features penguins, lions, bears, prairie dogs, orangutans, ostriches, llamas, and so many snakes.  The creatures are pieced together out of little carefully cut pieces of cloth which are lovingly embroidered onto the larger quilt.

Alas, my photography skills are indifferent and I cannot show you the gorgeous glistening colors of the quilt.  Because my parents have a quilt/knitting store (which you should visit if you are in Parkersburg, West Virginia), mom has a huge variety of magnificent new cotton print fabrics. I like the way all  of the animals came out, but I am especially fond of the snakes which truly capture the brilliantly colored scales.

Something that always strikes me at the zoo is how a brightly colored snake (which is a shape humans instinctively recognize and react to!) lying on a bed of completely differently colored twigs and leaves is difficult to see.  This quilt conveys something of that real-world effect (although my photographs do not capture the subtle scintillating colors of the fabrics and thus do not fully duplicate the verisimilitude).

It is lovely to lie on this quilt and read.  It is like being on the veld or in the northwoods…yet without harsh temperature extremes or biting insects (or, you know, lions).

Mom’s quilts become more beguiling by the year (I will have to show you some of her nighttime garden quilts someday), but this animal quilt is a particular winner because it has animals!  I think we can all agree that, one way or another, animals are pretty much the best aspect of life (even if not everyone is quite as fond of snakes and fish as I am). Look at the decorative stitching on that little snake in the early autumn forest!

These amazing quilted reptiles (including this purse lizard from an earlier post) are a reminder that imagination, artistry, and craft can endow our lives with some of the beauty and meaning of the natural world if we work at it.  This is an important theme, which we need to return to, because it seems like the way we live and work in the industrialized automated world is not working as well for everyone as philosophers, economists, and social theorists of the late twentieth century envisioned.  The beauty of the snakes are also a reminder that I need to collaborate with my mother to make another animal quilt at some point–perhaps the Australian outback or the deep sea!

Thanks again mom, for this magical blanket (which is as warm and functional as it is lovely). Right now though I had better go throw a lesser blanket over it. There are some real (domestic) animals clambering up onto my wild animal quilt and although I love them with all of my heart but I don’t trust them for a moment with my cherished quilt.

A Blue-Tongued Lizard Purse?

My mother is an expert at sewing.  When I go home, it is a special treat to visit her store and look at her creative projects.  Textile art has never worked out very well for me and my few early attempts at making things out of fabric always resulted in a mass of tangled thread and ruined cloth. I did once make a pair of colossal pants out of heavy burlap-like poplin for home economics class (I assumed the largest pattern size would be right for me, but these pants would probably have fallen off of Manute Bol), but even those were shoddy at best.  Because of this gaping hole in my creative skills, fabric art has a special appeal for me and sometimes even objects in which I would generally have no interest can be fascinating.  Additionally, my mom is a master who makes one-of-a-kind objects which beautifully meld form, color, and utility.

Such is the case with this…fabric purse.  I am not really a purse person… yet I couldn’t stop admiring this one because of the amazing Australian fabric which pictures frogs and ants carefully trying to forage without getting too close to the magnificent blue-tongued lizard.  Blue tongue lizards, by the way, are enormous skinks (enormous for skinks–they are still pretty small compared to cement trucks or small dogs) which live in Australia where they forage omnivorously in gardens and impress color aficionados with their dramatic blue tongues.  They are admired and collected as pets because of their mild temper and expressive faces (which somehow combine phlegmatic impassiveness with a gourmand’s interest in the world’s myriad foodstuffs).  All of this is amazingly on display in this had-made purse which my mother designed herself.  It is meant to look like an Australian garden: the lizard is hiding behind a too-small rose, but when you push the flower aside she is revealed in full disaffected glory.

Mom’s store (Market Street Yarn and Crafts in Parkersburg, West Virginia) is filled with gorgeous fabrics, yarns, and sewing tools.  Mom makes beautiful sample to show the patrons the sort of special bespoke objects which a gifted textile artist (seamstress? tailor? knitter? quilter?) can make.  I have greedily carried off quite a few choice pieces over the years (more on that later), but even in metrosexual New York, I have no need of a beautiful lizard handbag, so I merely photographed it so that you can share the amalgamated wonder of herpetology,  Australian gardens, and sewing.

My mother is also a blogger and you can read about her projects and her flocks of domesticated bird (including the famous LG) on her site.

This post isn’t just about compelling handbags, lizard with cerulean tongues, and selling sewing machines.  As our machines and our industrial mastery get better and better, humankind is moving towards a combined economic and spiritual crisis of what to do with our lives (to say nothing of our livelihoods).   I think the sewing shop and all of the beautiful clothes, quilts, and crafts on display there show how we can escape a robot-driven economic collapse and have better more beautiful lives to boot, but that idea is going to have to wait for another day.   In the mean time, enjoy this lizard purse.