Thistle Symbol Quilt

Earlier this month I posted pictures of Scottish thistles, while they were in full bloom, as I needed them for a project. Here is one of these pictures, just to refresh your memory. I've been busy putting them to good use on my little A3 quilt for the Tartan Holdall Collection which region 16 (Scotland) of the Quilters's Guild is putting together to celebrate the year of the Scottish Homecoming in 2009.

Now I have to be honest here and confess that I was neither born in Scotland (The Netherlands has that dubious honour) nor am I officially Scottish (my passport states I'm a British Citizen, since 1984). But I have been making my home here in Scotland for the last 20 years and hope to spend the rest of my days here, so maybe I could describe myself as a Scot by adoption. I adopted Scotland as my home and I hope Scotland has sort of adopted me too.

The brief was to have some tartan (our national fabric) in the quilt and I used a piece which I bought more than 15 years ago in Inverary, simply because I fell in love with the colours. But of course it also reflects beautifully the colour of the thistle (our national flower). I used my photographs and the Kaleidoscope Creator computer program to make the 9 pictures on the quilt which were than printed out onto self-adhesive cotton sheets (from Crafty Computer Paper), and did the same for the un-altered thistles at the bottom as well as the quotation from Robert Burns (our national poet) about thistles. Lots of beads were added as well as some handstitching with a variegated dyed silk thread. For the binding I found a silk fabric, picking up the olive green in the tartan.

This quilt will be travelling around with many others next year celebrating Scotland and all the home-comings!