quiltersmuse.com Blog

As I sit here in this chilly old New England home that has been around much longer than I, my thoughts turn to imagery, specifically that of butterflies and guns. They are connected, you know.

The butterfly has long symbolized the human soul and eternity, across time, and across cultures. Butterflies have been interpreted both realistically and abstractly in art, sometimes as a solid shape, just suggestive of the butterfly form.

We love butterflies. Even to think of them, those beautiful and free wonders, lifts our spirits. And so it was during the Era of the Great Depression and during World War II. Many a woman embroidered, drew, painted, stenciled, or appliquéd a butterfly. Sometimes, she made a one layer summer spreads or cotton (un-woven) coverlets with repeat butterfly motifs. Other times, she made a quilt.
I have never seen a butterfly quilt that I did not appreciate. The diverse ways in which butterflies have been depicted is amazing. Many of my site files, you may have noticed, feature a photo, or two, of butterfly items.

While some women may prefer to embroider soldiers with guns, in Redwork, as was the case of one (possibly German) piece that was featured in my book, Redwork Embroidery and Needlework Traditions in Europe and America, other women prefer to look on the brighter side of things, and create butterflies with their stitches, in whatever way they conceive them to be. Butterflies, in their wanton freedom as they tilt toward the skies, help us to escape the reality of guns and what they do to living people.
Tonight, there will be yet another speech on television, one that I do not really want to hear. In this time of continued war and the proposal of sending yet more of our young people into harm’s way, I shudder, and then I wish that I had a Butterfly Quilt in progress.

Just think what a huge quilt we could make, if quilters all created only one six inch, finished size, butterfly block, and we sewed the quilt altogether. I can bet that we could make a quilt that would have enough room to write the name of each of the more than three thousand American soldiers lost in the war. What a wild idea!

What if even just people who have lost a loved one made a block with that person’s name? Wow! we would still end up with a very large quilt.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. It is a totally half-baked idea. Sometimes, I just wish that there was a way to honor the entire group of soldiers who have so willingly and bravely gone into battle and lost their very lives. Sometimes, I think that we need reminders of beauty, like images of butterflies, so that we can learn to focus on our creative energies in times of political turbulence and distress.
Just thinking overtime…as usual

Pat

Just recently, I mentioned Monarch butterflies in one of these blog posts. As we were going into a building on Friday afternoon, a low growing, flowering plant near the entrance was being visited by a Monarch butterfly. It was SO beautiful! I remarked that we never have the camera with us at such times!

Well, yesterday morning, that situation was remedied. Jim was out back in the garden, pulling up the tomato plants that had been hit by heavy frost the night before. He then decided to come around to the front of the house to pick up “trash” on the sidewalk. Lots of people throw candy wrappers and cigarette boxes and used beverage containers, and other irritating litter there, as we try to keep things picked up. On his way past a stone container he’d constructed last year, that contains three Chyrsanthemum plants, he spotted a Monarch butterfly, among the honey bees and bumble bees. No, wait! There were two butterflies, no, three, …and then, no, four!!

He raced into the house to alert us and grabbed his camera on the way out. My niece and I went out, just in time, to see these magnificent creatures. She told us that during butterfly migration, there are huge numbers of them in a tree, right near her sister’s home in northern California.

I never tire of seeing butterflies.

Butterflies were a symbol of hope especially during the Great Depression, and therefore, they show up on many a quilt and coverlet from that era. In some cultures, butterflies symbolize the human soul.

Have a great day!

Pat