Old Sames--

Hand embroidery

Our Thread Tales book club read the book, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See. The book is about the lives of two girls who are friends throughout their lifetime. In the book, they are "old sames" and that was how I selected the title of my project. 

One girl begins life with little affluence but ends up affluent at the end of the book. The other girl begins life with affluence but ends up without it.

Broiderie perse on the shoes

The girls learn the needle arts: Sewing, embroidery and weaving. They make their own shoes.  They had bound feet and one of the girls achieved the perfect size foot. . . .three inches! I made a "shoe" that was three inches to applique on my quilt.

Fan

The girls communicate with one another writing on the folds of a fan. I designed my own fan pattern and I made a sample which became my label. 

Label

All of my fabrics are leftover from other quilts that I made. This is a technique piece. This project contains a bit of trapunto, hand embroidery, paper piecing, broiderie perse, free motion quilting and more techniques than I can remember.

Back

Since the fan was a central feature of the book, I used a stencil to mark a quilting pattern as well as a batik fabric that was printed with fans.

I was fortunate to have visited China and was impressed with the massive gates that were in front of places of reverence. I made my own sort of gate with the medium blue fabric. This fabric also represented a fabric that the girls could have woven.

Front

I made this project in 2007. It was the second project and second book of our Thread Tales group. My London daughter has this quilt.