May Spiritual Quilt

God Answers to Many Names
12x12 inches

This quilt was inspired by my own spiritual practice and by a conversation one night about the spiritual revelations we've had. One of my friends said that God told her it was okay to call God a female. I thought it was such an interesting revelation. This woman went to a traditional protestant church, but she was looking for a way to make her relationship with God more meaningful and personal.

I attend Quaker meeting and consider myself a Quaker, but I also practice Buddhist meditation at home and at the Dharma Center in Yellow Springs. I have friends who are Wiccans, Moslems, Jews, and Fundamentalist Christians. What we all share is a desire to know God and an awareness that humans are spiritual beings as well as physical and emotional beings.

I bought the shell that serves as the light in the quilt and that's what led to the quilt. Often, for me, a title will come first, and that will help direct how the quilt develops, but this quilt grew from the great light in the void and the title emerged along with the many hours of stitching and beading that it took to complete it.

The quilting exercises by Robbi Joy Eklow in The Quilting Arts Book served as inspiration for some of the machine quilting. The fabric is my own hand-dyed fabric.