This quilt is the result of trying to visualize the crazy dreams that I sometimes have just before I wake up. You know the ones: you emerge from deep sleep, being not fully conscious but kind of aware of the ongoing dreams that play out in your head. The dreams that I remember are incoherent, chaotic and senseless, not stories at all but weird snippets of random things. They have a mind of their own, they show the soul of the night which I feel is different from my usual self.

 I started by mono printing fabric with random squiggles and lines, drawing recognizable and other shapes, making marks that represent wild dreams. This fabric then was painted over. I combined it with other hand dyed fabrics and one commercial fabric, to represent different stages of sleep, going from wild dreams to calm phases and back again.

 The quilt was machine stitched with a few different colours in an overall swirly pattern, to complement the drawn lines.

 I love that there are so many details to discover. Thanks Terry for this unusual prompt, it was interesting to think about representing “night” without too much black!

The Soul of the Night

w 40″ x h 30″

Monoprinted, hand dyed and commercial cotton, machine pieced and quilted