2007 Journal Quilt - Medicine Wheel

Each year, I try to make a pilgrimage to an ancient spiritual site called Medicine Wheel. Located at nearly 10,000 feet in the Bighorn Mountains, it is an 800 year old construction made of flat rocks that have been stacked in the shape of an enormous wheel with 28 spokes, 80 feet in diameter. Nobody knows who built it or why, but there is speculation that the 28 spokes are linked to the phases of the moon and the number of days in the human reproductive cycle. There is a raised central cairn with several others on the periphery which appear to align with astronomical constellations.
Whatever the actual history or ancient purpose, this place has personal significance to me, as I always feel a deep spiritual stirring each time I visit. I’ve had visions and felt a connection with divine spirits while visiting Medicine Wheel. It is a very powerful place.

Since 2003, the Journal Quilt Project has provided valuable influence on my development as an art quilter. This year, for the culmination of the Journal Quilt Project, I wanted to create a single quilt relating to something personally significant. This spring, I came away from a Medicine Wheel visit committed to creating an image expressing my feelings about this sacred place. Discharged and hand dyed cottons were reverse appliquéd to create the swirling sky background. Painted Tyvek® and stone chips represent the Medicine Wheel in the foreground. Hand dyed couched threads, beads, a dyed silk hankie, and hand made polymer clay faces have been attached to embellish the surface, conveying my personal interpretation of the sacred spiritual connection between heaven and earth at the ancient Medicine Wheel site.

Oracle Card - Hathor

From Wikipedia:
Hathor (Egyptian for house of Horus) was originally a personification of the Milky Way, which was seen as the milk that flowed from the udders of a heavenly cow. Hathor was an ancient goddess, and was worshipped as a cow-deity from at least 2700 BC.

Another interpretation of the Milky Way was that it was the primal snake, Wadjet, the protector of Egypt who was closely associated with Hathor and other early deities among the various aspects of the great mother goddess.

Oracle Card - Yemanja / Yemanya / Iemanja/Yemoja

From Wikipedia:
Yemaja is an orisha, originally of the Yoruba religion, who has become prominent in many Afro-American religions. Africans from what is now called Yorubaland brought Yemaya and a host of other deities/energy forces in nature with them when they were brought to the shores of the Americas as captives. She is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a protector of children.

The goddess is known as Yemanjá or Iemanjá in Brazil.

Every February 2 in Salvador, Bahia, there is a celebration of Iemanjá, which involves thousands of people lining up at dawn to leave their offerings at her shrine in Rio Vermelho. Presents for Iemanjá usually include flowers, perfume, and objects of female vanity (jewelry, combs, mirrors). These are gathered in large baskets and taken out to the sea by local fishermen. Afterwards a massive street party ensues.

In Rio de Janeiro, Iemanjá is celebrated on New Year's Eve, when millions of cariocas dressed in white gather on Copacabana beach to greet the New Year, watch fireworks, and throw flowers and other offerings into the sea for the goddess in the hopes that she will grant them their requests for the coming year. Paintings of Iemanjá are for sale in Rio shops, next to painting of Jesus etc. They portray her as a woman rising out of the sea. Small offerings of flowers and floating candles are left in the sea on many nights at Copacabana.

In the Umbanda religion, Yemoja is a goddess of the ocean and patron deity of the survivors of shipwrecks.

Abundantia - Oracle Card

Abundantia (ah-boon-DAN-shee-ah) The Roman goddess of good fortune, abundance and prosperity.

From Wikipedia:

Within Roman Mythology, the figure of Abundantia (also known as Annona) was considered to be only a minor deity: the personification of luck, abundance and prosperity, and was also the guardian of the cornucopia - the horn of plenty. It was with this that she distributed food and money. The main version of the origin of the cornucopia is similar in both the Greek and the Roman mythology, in which the king of the gods, having accidentally broken the horn of the mystical goat in play, promised that the horn would never run empty the fruits of her desire. The horn was then later to be passed into the keeping of Abundantia.

While there are few temples or signs of worship for Abudantia to be found within Rome, she has also been described in the past as 'the beautiful maiden of success', and as such is largely featured in art. Often portrayed as holding the cornicopia and sheaves of corn, while allowing the contents to fall to the ground, Abundantia's form has graced Roman coins in ages past.

Abudantia has withstood the tests of time, taking on the form of the French 'Olde Dame Habonde; also known as Domina Abundia, and Notre Dame d'Abondance', a beneficial fairy figure found throughout Teutonic Mythology, and poetry of the Middle Ages. Within texts related to this figure it is said that she would bestow the gift of plenty and of good fortune to those she visits, and in modern society is the patron of gamblers - the revered Lady Fortune.

I loved the way this one looked in my sketch, but I had to condense it a bit to fit my card size. The wings are supposed to appear to be her arms and the breasts and swollen belly are supposed to relate to her life giving abundance. After I had to condense the image, it looks to me like her wing/arms are really more like a head dress or elaborate collar. 18 month old grandson, Airus says, "Buddah" when he sees it. I guess it does look like a Buddah!

I am also trying to work out a good way to label these cards with text. I made screens, but they did not work well on the cards. I tried just writing on the cards and I don't like the way that looks, either. I think I will try printing text on fabric and attaching it. There is already text on the back of the cards, so maybe that is adequate.

Oracle Card - Butterfly Maiden

Butterfly Maiden is a Hopi Native American kachina (spirit dancer) who ensures that crops yield healthy and bountiful harvests. As an oracle, she can guide you through life's transitions and help you spread your wings.

I've made my Butterfly Maiden with a scrap of Arishi shibori I dyed several years ago. Now that I see her on the computer screen, I am thinking she is going to need some beads to wear!

Sarasvati - Oracle Card

Sarasvati, a Hindu goddess of the arts and creation.

From Wikipedia:
In Hinduism, Saraswati (Sanskrit सरस्वती sarasvatī) is one of the goddesses, the other two being Lakshmi and Durga, that form the female counterpart of the Trimurti. Saraswati has been regarded as a river goddess and in recent times a goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. She is the consort of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation.

Mawu - Mother Earth Oracle Card

This Goddess, Mawa comes from West African folklore and is said to have created the earth with her partner, the sun (Liza).

From Wikipedia:

Mawu (alternately: Mahu) is a creator goddess, associated with the sun and moon. In some myths, she is the twin sister-wife of the male god Lisa; in others, both deities are aspects of the same androgynous or hermaphroditic deity, Mawu-Lisa.

After creating the earth and all life and everything else on it, she became concerned that it might be too heavy, so she asked the primeval serpent, Aido Hwedo, to curl up beneath the earth and hold it up in the sky. When she asked Awe, a monkey she had also created, to help out and make some more animals out of clay, he boasted to the other animals and challenged Mawu. Gbadu, the first woman Mawu had created, saw all the chaos on earth and told her children to go out among the people and remind them that only Mawu can give Sekpoli - the breath of life. Gbadu instructed her daughter, Minona, to go out among the people and teach them about the use of palm kernels as omens from Mawu. When Awe, the arrogant monkey climbed up to the heavens to try to show Mawu that he too could give life, he failed miserably. Mawu made him a bowl of porridge with the seed of death in it and reminded him that only she could give life and that she could also take it away.

Oracle Cards

Last winter, I spent an entertaining morning forming faces out of polymer clay. Ever since then, I have been conjuring up various ideas for including them in my creations. I used quite a few of these faces in my 2007 Journal quilt, but can't unveil it until after the opening of the International Quilt Festival in Houston later this month.


In the meantime, I started a series of Oracle cards, each one depicting a different spiritual icon. I did a bit of online research to help establish this series based on spiritual mythology from around the world. My Wikipedia research found this information:

An oracle is a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinion; an infallible authority, usually spiritual in nature. It can also be a prediction of the future, from deities, that is spoken through another object or life-form. In the ancient world many sites gained a reputation for the dispensing of oracular wisdom: they too became known as "oracles".
Isis is a goddess in Egyptian mythology. She was most prominent mythologically as the wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus, and was worshipped as the archetypal wife and mother.

I began my series with a group of sketches on 8 x 5 inch index cards, which provide good ratio of proportion for the size of my polymer clay faces. Initially, I planned to make a folded book from a single sheet of background fabric, so I planned a layout accordingly.

I painted a single piece of fabric in a neutral shade,

Then, I fused the background fabrics into position.

To be continued . . . .