'Remember, we were safe there'

I have started the new year with a finish. The art quilt I was woking on before Christmas was a balm to the stresses of the season and I mindfully hand stitched my way through the holidays.

This piece started life as a remembrance of the light playing on my kitchen wall when the first UK lockdown was announced at the end of March 2020. A scrap of rust-stained linen was the perfect size for a contemplation quilt - just 18" x 18".

Picking out the rust-lines, hand basting and applique-ing tiny, eco-dyed hexies to the linen ground interpreted my memory of the light.

I wanted to represent the feeling of hunkering down, keeping safe, and a circle of green silk thread, couched in place was a natural motif.

Outside our home, the virus was (and still is) an ever-present shadow. The tendrils of handstitching, representing the ebb and flow of wave and after wave. The title came to me as I stitched 'Remember, we were safe there'.

I have been brave and entered this quilt into the juried SAQA exhibition 'Haven'. We hear in March if we have been successful, but either way, this is a quilt I am proud of and a theme and style I want to explore more.

'Remember, we were safe there'

17.5" x 17.5"

Samantha Boot

2022