Carolyn: Open Hands Grow Caring Hearts

My thoughts for the chosen word, “open” continually went to an image of open hands.  I have thought a great deal about how much at this particular time in our national history, we need to be more open to folks who are different from us in ALL ways - gender, ethnicity, religiously, politically, etc. It is so much easier to accept people who are like us in every way, and oh so very hard to accept those who are different. I firmly believe that the first step in healing is learning to accept others. And, I have personally experienced the growth of love that can come from doing just that. Thus, “Open Hands Grow Loving Hearts” became my theme.

I chose a hand-painted fabric in sun-filled colors by Laura Wasalowski for the background. I took a course from Laura many year ago, and I adore her use of whimsy and bright colors.  I found an old tree stencil in my stash of “things for quilts” and modified it for my bare-branched tree. I drew the tree onto a light tan batik fabric and then painted it with Intense Ink Pencils.  When it was dry, I used Primacolor Pencils to sketch in shadows and lines. My next step was to choose scraps of Kaffe fabrics and hand-dyed fabrics for “hands” to serve as leaves for the tree. I selected different colors and textures to mimic the great variety of people in our world. 

The tree with Wonder Under was carefully cut out and fused to the background. Then I drew roots for the tree directly onto the background. I colored them in with multiple colors of Primacolor Pencils. After making the “4-layer sandwich” with batting, Timtex and backing fabric, I machine stitched the tree and roots.  

Next came the placement of the hearts. I decided to make 3 hearts flying away from the tree and 4 hearts growing up from the roots. To do this, I felt like I first needed to create some grass and leafy stems. I drew them directly onto the background, stitched around them, and then colored them in with multiple layers of green Primacolor Pencils. With each step when using pencils, I “set” the colors with a hot iron. 

The final step was the binding. For that, I chose a Kaffe Collective fabric that complemented the fabrics used for the hands. I hope you will enjoy my interpretation of "Open".