Saturday, November 7, 2015

First Book Club quilt--"The DaVinci Code"

“The DaVinci Code” was the first book our book club, "Thread Tales," read, discussed, made a quilt/project and had a reveal! 

I chose to replicate a scene from the book.  If you have read the book, can you tell which scene I chose? (It was the scene where Langdon and Sophie have visited the high tech safety deposit box building and decided to go to Teabring’s rented mansion for help in solving the cryptex or puzzle box.) 

I sketched the design on a piece of paper and then onto freezer paper in actual size.  It was the first time that I tried to make an art type quilt. The house/barn was inspired from a block by Mary Tendall and Connie Tesene in the book “Celebrating the Quilt.”

One the front of the quilt, the scraggly, ugly, misshapen tree signifies the evil Teabring and represents his physical abnormalities. The mansion/barn represents where a major portion of the clue solving took place. On the fence, the embroidered crosses represents the church and the equal distance cross represents the early religious symbol. The triangles represent the male/female symbols. The “eight” symbols represent the large and small cryptex as well as the path Langdon and Sophie travel to solve the mystery. The white area represents the albino monk. Note that the white gradually turns to beige as the monk commits a series of serious crimes all for the greater good of the Church. In the white, there is one of the five hidden clues that I chose to include from the book.

I designed the back of the quilt, first, based on the end of the book when Langdon returns to the Louvre and looks out at the landscaping under a star and moon lit night, he sees where the male and female symbols intersect thereby marking the spot where the answer to the mystery lies. The label is gold to represent the moonlight and the Star of David represents what Langdon saw looking out over the landscape.

The stars I made in Sally Collins’ precision piecing class in October 2006 and the quilt is the size it is because that is the size of the back that I had in my stash, I have used silk thread, nylon thread and sulky thread to free motion machine quilt this piece and I didn’t use the same machine quilting design twice which was fun.


Size:  35 ½ x 47 ½  made in 2007

6 comments:

Nancy said...

Very nice! I like how much symbolism you were able to include in the space you had. You put a lot of thought into this piece and it shows.

Luann Fischer said...

Terrie,
I haven't read the book, but your description of why you made the different choices is very detailed. It's amazing what one can do when they get out of their own way, right? I hope to see it in person someday.
Luann (a million miles away, well not quite)

Monica said...

This was quite an undertaking, Terry. I hope it was well received at book club! I only saw the movie, but the atmosphere feels the same. :D

And look at those tiny stars on the back! Great work.

TerryKnott.blogspot.com said...

Nancy, Thank you! It was a fun piece to quilt once I had figured out the design. --Terry

TerryKnott.blogspot.com said...

Monica, It was a fun process. I'm glad you felt the atmosphere was similar to the movie! Yep, those are tiny stars and why there are just three! :) Thank you! --Terry

TerryKnott.blogspot.com said...

Luann, It was a little scary to start; but, once I did, it was a fun project! You are right about getting of your own way! Thank you!!--Terry