Bella's Sanctuary

"Bella's Sanctuary"

When the word “Sanctuary” was revealed, I wasn’t sure in what direction I wanted to go. At first, I thought I might go with the animal sanctuary idea, but that just didn’t seem to inspire me. During a conversation with my gentleman friend, we talked about all the different ways that the word could be portrayed. What came out of the conversation was the idea of how a small child finds sanctuary behind mom. I called my niece and asked if I could come over and photograph her daughter Isabella hiding behind her. Although it took several tries (I wish I could show all the silly faces that Bella gave me from behind her mom) I finally got the perfect shot. I translated that photograph into my sanctuary piece.

I used both hand dyes and commercial cotton fabric. These fabrics were shaped from a template and appliquéd together by glue (I love Roxanne’s Glue-Baste-It). The eye, lashes and brow are a combination of pismacolor pencils and fabric paint. The entire piece is covered with a layer of black tulle before any stitching is done. There is a lot of thread sketching, especially on the jeans. The background quilting is in a spiral, which you will find in many of my recent pieces, and I faced it with a hand dye of pink and beige that seemed to fit with the colors from the front. A few beads and sequins finish out the background but don’t seem to detract from the focal point of the little girl’s eye.

I really like this small quilt and hope to do a larger rendition in the future.

Lisa L. Kay