Emergence

This quilt began as a small sketch in 2009, a goddess breaking free to embrace the sun. Unfortunately I had no idea what would come below the split, what the goddess would be emerging FROM for several years.

If you died tomorrow, what would you most regret not doing? Do you have a dream achievement, a special project you long to focus on? Have you been putting off this dream for years? This beautiful 3-month daily planner includes undated blank calendars so you can fill in the spaces to fit any month of the year. Click Here to read more about Leah's Goddess Planner.

It wasn't until I reached the crossroads with Sinkhole and decided to burn that quilt that the idea for a combination Emergence / Sinkhole quilt popped into my head. The sinkhole symbol was powerful and dark, and it seemed perfect to set the goddess emerging from the split in the middle of that quilt.

Officially I started Emergence in the September 2011 and more or less stopped working on it around December of that year. Overall it was a difficult quilt to work on because I rushed the design process and felt bored and irritated with the project for many months. In the summer of 2012 I pulled the quilt back out and made adjustments to the design by adding fabric hair and paint to the goddess body.

While creating this quilt, I recorded the journey in multiple blog posts which you can read by clicking the links below:

Within each post is multiple photos of the quilt in progress which you can click on to zoom in and see the detail of stitching or construction.

In the end, this quilt did serve a purpose: it forced me to see that sticking with the same old techniques and methods was just a recipe for boredom and I really needed to branch out and experiment with each new goddess quilt.

This quilt also nailed home the lesson that show quilting is not the end-all-be-all of my work. While yes, I can make show winning quilts, obsession about perfection should never be allowed to ruin my enjoyment of the quilting process.

Overall, I needed this quilt to show me the many ways I was still very stuck in limited thoughts. It wasn't a comfortable experience, but it was an experience I needed to have.

Would you love to read the inspirational quilting stories behind all of Leah's goddess quilts? In 2019 Leah published her artist memoir showcasing the creation of each quilt in the goddess series. This is a story of transformation and how each goddess quilt pushed Leah to become a better woman, wife, mother, and quilter. This is the book quilters have been asking about for years! Click Here to learn more about Leah Day's Goddess Quilts