Air Chrysalis

My second  quilt for this year’s Fifteen by Fifteen challenge was inspired by the same book 1Q84 written by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. My favorite parts of that book were things that looked like science fiction and were magic. One of those things was Air Chrysalis.

Not being a naturally born English speaker I had to research what it meant. In the book it is a womb-like cocoon that the Little People construct at night out of white threads pulled from the thin air. It is liable to contain a shadow self known as a dohta. Dohta represents  the relationship between mind and body, the shadow of heart and mind. 

The background for this quilt is hand-dyed cotton fabric. I used metallic yarn to stitch my Air Chrysalis. I deliberately made it off-center. The threads flow in the air on the edges of the quilt and they come together to make a pattern. 

Detail:

In artificial light my Air Chrysalis looks magic: it reflects light differently from the stitching lines that are going in different directions:

It was fun to create this because I love hand stitching.