Thumbs – Nicki Ferland – “Sisters”

I came this | | close to making a thumbprint cookie collage quilt! I really wanted to make a green thumb garden, but I felt a little constricted by the size requirements; I was afraid I would not be able to achieve the detail I was envisioning in my mind. This quilt is a bit of a hop, skip and a leap from the green thumb idea. I was reminded of the Haudenosaunee story of the Three Sisters, which describes a method of companion planting (corn, beans and squash). Here, I’ve depicted the Sisters as three braids of sweetgrass.

 

I fused small sweetgrass-inspired fabrics (greens, purple and cream) onto brown cotton with Steam-A-Seam 2. I used free motion quilting to appliqué the braids to a straight-line quilted background fabric from my stash. I faced the quilt, and finished by adding embroidery floss ties to each end of the three sweetgrass braids (to keep the braids from unravelling, of course!).