Turtle Dreaming

Separated by oceans and continents, time zones and hemispheres it’s surprising how much my quilt buddy, Kaye, and I have in common. In addition to our passion for quilting, we love sharing our skills with others. We both live by the water, enjoy time spent with our grandchildren and are both blessed with a sense of humour! We have exchanged numerous emails, shared images of our work, pictures of our family and lots of laughs! I am so happy to have Kaye as my friend! Kaye is an expert in “La Passacaglia” quilting and I decided that my quilt should be made from pieced blocks. Using Aboriginal designed fabric depicting turtles, I worked on an idea based upon the dreamtime story “WAYAMBA THE TURTLE” to illustrate our unique Australian culture. (The story is on the back of the quilt). I was inspired by Maxine Rosenthal’s book “One Block Wonders”, where each hexagonal block is unique. With careful cutting and freehand machine stitching, I made more than sixty 3-inch blocks from the one piece of fabric. I arranged the blocks in a colour and design sequence that would follow the story, beginning at the top right with blocks that represented the home camp, working clockwise to the billabong and the marshland where the women and children foraged for food. This flowed into the hunting ground and then the desert and finally the petal window showing the turtle in the creek.