"Heads will Roll" Skull Quilt

I found this great fabric at Joann's a couple of years ago. It was sparkly and flowery and had big colorful skulls on it and yet it seemed "happy". It came with 2 background colors, black and pink, and I bought some of both. Because of the size of the skulls, it was perfect for a "stack-and-whack" treatment. I own the book "One Block Wonders" by Maxine Rosenthal and most of the quilt is made of the hexagonal blocks made by cutting 6 identical triangles from the fabric.
Then I appliqued skulls I cut out of the rest of the fabric onto the quilt. For some reason, I thought this quilt needed to show skulls rolling off a cliff and collecting in a pile at the bottom of the cliff. I believe this fabric is a Mexican "Day of the Dead" design. This is a day that is celebrated the day after Halloween (All Saints Day). It is a happy family festival when families get together and clean and decorate family graves and eat skull shaped treats and remember loved ones. From what I read, this day is an interesting mixture of Christianity and ancient beliefs. Since quite a bit of the history of how western Europeans treated the indigenous people is a bloody mess, I think that all stewed around in my brain until this came out. This is the first quilt I have made that I didn't feel that I controlled. I started to say things like, "The quilt wants fringe (like on a pinata)". (I talked the quilt out of that, I tried it and it was too much.)

This is a close up of the hexagon blocks, all jammed up against each other. I like how it swirls and moves, and quilted it to emphasize the spinning.

There is the whole thing. I quilted "bounce lines" into it so you could see where the skulls bounced off the cliff before landing at the bottom.
There is the pile of skulls. My feelings were not hurt by being called a "sick puppy" by the people at the quilt show. The ladies who did not "get" it were a couple of generations older than I am and I don't like every quilt I see, either. Lots of people said, "OOh, cool!" too, though. At this same show was a quilt with large (12 inch!) rubber centipedes sewn on it, so I think I'm in good company. I've made a lot of quilts that look just like the pattern, and I like them just fine, but the ones that are one-of-a kind are that much more special and have more of "me" in them (for better or worse!).

I am happy to say we had a great trip to the BWCA and as soon as I get the 35mm film on a cd, I will post photos of that. I love my Canon AE-1, it takes better photos than the digital and has a killer telephoto lens, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get this film developed, or even to buy it!