February Journal Quilt

Posted on | February 27, 2007 |

I am so excited to share with you all my second journal quilt titled, “The Chuppah”. The theme for February was “Love Songs”. And, though there are many songs that remind me of my relationship for my husband, the one I chose to illustrate is a Jewish song that was played at our wedding.

Our wedding was quite traditional, and did not include many of the American customs of “I do” and the “Wedding March”. Instead, as I walked down the aisle, “Dodi Li” played. “Dodi Li” is from The Song of Songs in the Old Testament. “I am my beloved’s” is what it means. And during our wedding ceremony, since there traditionally is not really a part for the woman, the Rabbi allowed me to say only, “Dodi Li v’ani Li” - “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”. (We could have said our own vows in English, but we chose not to - we were chicken! LOL). Please note: there are many different variations of a Jewish ceremony and there are also different interpretations of the different elements. This quilt represents mine.
The Hebrew text says “Dodi Li”, the title of the song. The text resides under the “chuppah” or wedding canopy. Jewish couples get married under a Chuppah that represents their future home and the community. The Chuppah is an important symbol of Judaism and of commitment. Many couples use either a family quilt or a quilt made of pieces from friends and family. We chose not to do that at the time, so this is my tribute to the chuppah.

All the fabric used in this quilt was hand painted and embellished by me. It was a huge challenge for me, and I really enjoyed it. I used a combination of Pearlescent Liquid Acrylics and Golden Fluid Acrylics for the colors. I also did a bit of work with the Pearlescent Shiva Oil sticks. The detail work is done with quilting and Gelly Roll pens - Souffle pens, Gold Shadow, and Moonlight Gelly Roll Pens - and the text was done with a Pigma Micron pen - all pens by Sakura.

I still have a lot of work to do in the next quilt to get better at maintaining a flat surface, but I used the surface folds and bunching as a design element, so it worked out OK in this case.

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