Ballade à la lune

My choice for our Books challenge was an anthology of French poetry.

In this anthology I chose 6 poems by authors I love, whose first lines will serve as inspiration for each quilt. They are 19th and 20th century authors.

The link between each quilt will be a linocut of the first letter of the title that will appear on the quilt. I’ve used medieval lettering for this.

I won’t be able to translate the poems, but some of them have been translated for English editions, and where possible I’ll include this translation or the general theme of the poem in my artist statement.

“Ballade à la lune” is a poem by Alfred de Musset published in “Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie”, which was shocking for its writing, which was too modern for its time.

For the background, I used a fabric dyed with the second dye bath, which gave a melted effect.

My idea was to create a moonlit night scene, giving it an unreal, mysterious atmosphere.

At the bottom, I applied a layer of tarlatan, with a strip of cotton with decoloration on the top to give the illusion of mist.

The text of the poem is continuously quilted on the background with tone-on-tone cotton thread just to create texture.

The letter B has been machine embroidered with metallic thread to reinforce the medieval effect of the lettering.

The bell tower is redrawn from one of my photos.

Ballad to the Moon

It was in the dark night, On the yellowed steeple, The moon, the Moon, Like a dot on an i

Detail view: