Q is for Quilt: Leah Evans

Happy last day of March!

March flew by and I am more than ready for April (and more spring weather).

Quilter extraordinaire, Leah Evans goes through many steps in order to create these detailed map quilts. Through a process of applique, reverse applique, piecing, natural and synthetic dying, needle-felting, hand printing, and a variety of embroidery stitches her maps come to a textile life. She draws her images from a bird's eye view or the view you see in an airplane, through maps and aerial photographs. 

I enjoyed her correlation of "magnified microbial life forms and remote sensing images of huge tracts of land." The images you see look so familiar because we have seen maps and been through biology class. But after becoming acquainted with the image it begins to look abstract and foreign. It makes me want to reacquaint myself with land and other worlds, study maps, and appreciate the smallest of living things such as bacteria and how everything in this life is connected.

[Cue the "Circle of Life" song from the Lion King]