wooden board painted design with with exterior paint

The North Star barn quilt

Barn Quilts are inspired by the design of a single block of a family quilt. The patterns in the family quilts represent protection and warmth; creativity and community; healing and rejuvination; resilience and resourcefulness. Barn quilts are associated with rural, agricultural communities and they tell the stories and traditions of the families of those communities.

I respect and admire the designs and the traditions from those communities. They are the inspiration and starting point for my own designs which are set in urban landscapes with design elements that tell of the stories from my culture and experiences. I also want to embody the same beliefs to represent protection and warmth, healing and resourcefulness.

The North Star design is modified from a 19th century star quilt block called Lucy’s Star . My star is called the North Star as I born beside the North Sea. The North Star is known as the fixed point in the sky and sailors used this fixed point for millenium, for navigation. In Northern tales, it is the end of the spike around which the sky rotates as it holds the world together. The North Star shows the direction home.