Finished: Kyrie Eleison

Earlier this week I shared about carving and printing the central tesselating blocks and word blocks that go around the edge for my newest liturgical quilt, and today I'm back to share the final piece.

Lord Have Mercy, c. 2026 Shannon Conley, 43"x38"

The gold diamonds were printed separately and appliqued to the rest of the quilt.  I tried to give a little additional color variation to the main tesselating pattern by using different colors of blue, turquoise, and purple thread.

Here are some closeups of the words spiraling around the outer edge "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison"

Unusually, I struggled a lot with my silk quilting thread,  I'm afraid some of it has gotten quite old, and has been sitting in my sun-filled studio on a wall-mounted thread rack for several years.  I had a ton of breakage with this quilt, so it was much less fun to quilt than usual and the back is terrible.  But it's done now and I've put all my silk thread in a dark box for storage.

The artist statement reads: Part of my ongoing series of liturgical quilts, this piece features a tesselating, interlocking pattern in the center, made using hand carved block prints, and reflecting the interconnectedness of all life on earth. The Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy) swirls around the outer edge in an ever continuing plea for mercy, compassion, and forgiveness as we, as individuals and societies, continue to fail each other and fail our planet.