Eclipse Charity Quilt: Council Meeting/Third Wife

Council Meeting/Third Wife Block by Angie

I was thinking of someone outside the magic altogether. I was trying to imagine the face of the unnamed woman who had saved the entire tribe, the third wife. -Bella Swan, Eclipse, page 260

I had this great picture in my mind of a brightly colored campfire rising up from the logs. Showing through the smoke, I saw a beautiful native woman holding her arms out and in one hand there was a knife. I tried many versions on this idea...mostly with appliqué but as I am not a great artist, I couldn't get the picture right. It was really frustrating and I left it alone and did the other two blocks. I came back to this one last.

Iris had sent me a great pattern with tents on it and in one corner of that pattern was a campfire. So I made that pattern and stared at it for a while. And again, walked away because it just wasn't talking to me. I couldn't see the rest of the picture. Plus there wasn't anything framing it. I made a big ole' pine tree and tried to put it next to the campfire...it looked ridiculous! So the tree went into the 'to be used with some other project later' pile. I made a mirror image of the background without the campfire...I wanted it to look quilty so I used different sizes and colors of green on the meadow part of the background. Then I used fusible web to attach some free-cut trees I made and then blanket stitched those down as well. I was pretty ok with the backdrop but was still somewhat stuck with how to depict the stories that were told around the fire.

I knew I needed to represent the third wife portion of the story and searched for DAYS for the right picture that I kept seeing in my head. Alas, I could find no such picture so this was the best I could do. Iris had sent me some printable organza at the beginning of this project and that is what I used for the pictures. Once I had printed that one out, I decided that one picture was not enough and started looking for something to show the 'sprit wolf' portion of the story. I considered doing other pictures too but didn't want it to be too crowded. I was trying very hard to make the story elements not look 'ghostly.' I wanted them to look more like memories or like when you hear a story and you make pictures in your mind...I used almost all batiks for this block as I LOVE them! Nothing captures natural shading and real life colors like batik fabric. The logs in the fire were make with muleskin so they look heavier than the fire. Anyway..there's my crazy developments of this block...