Slice of Life

This was my entry to India's first big quilt competition. Didn't win any ribbon, but I figure my quilt already had an abundance of them :-)

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Name of the Quilt : Slice of Life

Size : 36"x36"

A quilt tells a story :

Mine. Yours. His. Hers. Everybody's. Anybody's.
One. From Time immemorial. Sharing sister atoms from the Big Bang itself.
And yet all different. No two alike. Unique. Special.
Countless factors working in our favour, all conspiring, colluding, weaving together to make happen this moment.
This very moment.
The Now. Exists just for me. Exists just for you. Or him or her.
Our own peculiar Now.
All creation, tirelessly working, pulsating, pounding, intertwining, just to bring me this moment.
Powerful. Fragile. Precious. This slice of life.
Chaotic. Beautiful. Ephemeral. This slice of Life.


The making of the Quilt :

Hi, I am Tina and have been quilting on and off for 3 years now. I often get asked this question, "How did you become a quilter?", and looking back I see how seemingly unrelated and insignificant individual moments have brought me to where I am today. I have always been fascinated with The Chaos Theory and how even a tiny, almost imperceptible change somewhere can set in motion a chain of events, a unique sequence of events, that will, over time, result in a totally and unrecognizably different scenario. Remember the butterfly effect? Who knows when my butterfly flapped its wings.. was it when a distant aunt brought back a rotary cutter and mat from USA when neither I nor she had a clue what it was (and kept it in storage for almost a decade!!); was it when a chance houseguest, a friend of a friend, and I visited a bookstore to kill some time and she, out of gratitude asked to buy me a book and the one book that was lying open had a pic of a quilt on a mat; or was it as far back as my teens when mom thought I should get a high profile job instead of messing with craft and being a natural rebel, were the seeds of my 'this particular future' sown then?

When Husqvarna Viking India announced the topic 'A quilt tells a story', I knew I wanted to incorporate all of this and have my quilt tell my story. Then I also realized its not my story alone. Everybody is where they are and who they are due to stuff that goes back ages. And yet its uniquely mine. I also decided to go philosophical and just as you don't get to choose your cards but play with whatever Life deals you, I decided to work with whatever I had at hand at that moment. So came together, this unique mix of colours and textures and widths and lengths of ribbons, fabric and thread. Just like Life. There are even some dark clouds and silver linings if you look. The design itself grew organically and from one great haphazard heap of likely sequences, my ribbons bore themselves out to this particular one, weaving together beautifully and harmoniously, synchronising perfectly, creating the fabric of life, creating this slice of Life.

So, what do you think? :-)