Hill of Crosses at Sunset

I live in Siauliai, Lithuania. The closest tourist attraction here is the Hill of Crosses located only 7 minutes drive from my home.

Actually I don’t like talking about the Hill of Crosses as a tourists attraction. To me it is a symbol of our resistance to Russian and, later, Soviet occupation. To me it is a sacred place and I don’t like it becoming more and more commercialized. The biggest impression I had was when visiting it for the first time back in 70-ties, still under Soviet occupation.

I’ve been thinking of making The Hill of Crosses quilt since I came back to live in Lithuania but the inspiration came when I saw a photo taken by an amazing photographer Amos Chapple. His photo of the Hill of Crosses at sunset is mesmerizing:

My choice of fabrics:

These three were my own hand dyed fabrics and I added Kona solid black for crosses.

I started experimenting and made a small (6×6) inches quilt first. I do this often as it helps me to decide on design, fabric selection, and construction:

The larger piece (12×12”) I was going to enter into Monthly Art jecProt on FB . My friend Brenda Gael Smith is a curator of MAP and we all enter one piece on the 15th of every month.

I almost never make sketches but for this one I needed a little sketch to help me with design and construction:

I used my traditional technique of piecing improvised log cabin blocks. It took me one day to make the top and then couple more hours next day to quilt and face it. I had photos of the process but my camera broke down and I couldn’t download them.

So there is a final result and few detail photos:

I am thinking of making a full scale wallhanging using the same inspiration but I am not sure if I would use the same technique. We will see…