Em's Icara

I made this oodles of years ago (8 or 9?) when a favorite artist-poet-actor-goddess of mine moved south to return to the family fold. I worried how the quilt held up over the years after hearing a terrifying cautionary tale about the dangers of tying quilts. And I've worried how permanent the indelible fabric pen was too.

She was kind enough to send a photo in situ. 

The quilt has a quote from the Icarus story in Edith Hamilton's "Mythology":
"Escape may be checked by water and land, but the air and the sky are free."

And my photo of the front back in June 2006. Woo-hoo! Better with time.

Here's the back. What you can't see from this crappy, crappy photo is that the white ties appear as stars against a sky. The "signature patch" is inspired by Matisse' "Icarus." I free-handed it on a napkin at a restaurant to show my then-boyfriend what I was going for. He helped me blow up the image at a Kinko's and we figured out how to adhere it to the back long enough for me to hand-stitch it on.

A little closer look at the label. Is that...writing...on the legs?

Is this about the time you're saying, "Wait, didn't Icarus crash and burn? You know, when he tried to fly too high?" I have always called baloney sausage on that story. Oh, I'm sure it served a specific purpose or was a modern-day meme for the ancient Greeks. But it's never worked well for me in our world. When we rise above our troubles, we soar, dangnabbit.

And, you know, Icarus was a boy, Em is a girl. So, this one became Icara, which, in my firm belief, is the feminine Greek ending for the Icarus. Please do not attempt to dissuade me otherwise.

Here's the haiku for Icara, I mean Em. 

but when she rises

and finds freedom in her wings,

she consumes the sun