Memento Mori Quilt

As promised here is the quilt I made for the next Scottish Suitcase Collection. The idea is that as many Scottish members of the Quilters' Guild as possible make A3 sized quilts (that's 11.5 x 16.5")which will then all go into a suitcase that can be booked by groups . Eventually the quilts will return to their owners. We did a previous suitcase which is still on the road and at that occasion all the quilts had to have some tartan in it. But this time the theme is: not just tartan and shortbread. Which I took to mean not your typical Scottish motifs.

And I did take that to heart and then some! One of our Scottish heritage items are the fabulous gravestones to be found in virtually every Scottish graveyard I've ever visited. But that heritage is in grave (!) danger of being lost to future generations because most of these graveyards and the tombstones therein are rapidly falling into disrepair, with stones falling over, breaking in half and the inscriptions being lost due to wind and weather. So this quilt is my attempt to bring that to public attention and remind us to start doing something to preserve this part of the Scottish heritage.

The gravestone I used on the quilt is to be found in my local graveyard in West Linton. The quilt itself is almost completely the result of various experiments, where I used furnishing fabric, painted, sprayed, dribbled, splashed, stencilled and stamped the background after I had quilted it and then adhered the image of the gravestone (printed onto voile) to this, as well as the rose, which comes from the top layer of a paper napkin. The inchies are a return to my inchie quilts (which were on show at my exhibition). This time I've adhered a gold letter to each inchie and together they read: MEMENTO MORI, which is also to be found on the gravestone itself. It means both Remember the Dead, and Remember that you will die.

No tartan or shortbread on this quilt!! You can see the details of the gravestone better on the original picture below.

I know gravestones are not to everyone's taste and hope noone will be offended by the fact I have incorporated one in my art, but as for me, the end result was everything I had hoped for and more. The border fabric was the result of earlier fabric painting experimentation and by great good fortune it proved to be just the right thing for this quilt. So good when that happens!

And I have also decided to dedicate a separate blog to the West Linton graveyard, where you can find this stone. Here is the link!