(Click On any of these photos click on it and it will go to full screen to read the provenance or study photo detail. Escape will return to normal.)
Last Christmas my daughter presented me with a beautiful quilt that interpreted the cliff dwelling from my novel The Ruin. When I asked the designer to create a cover for the sequel, The Bee Tree she used the image of this quilt. I was delighted with the whole concept, of course.
Not long before the unveiling of the Ruin quilt, I had the very high pleasure of being the guest of her book club, The Under Covers Book Club. It was interesting to see what each person homed in on when they read the book. One of the reasons the book club was formed was a common interest besides reading books. They are quilters. (Thus the clever double meaning name – Under Covers) Each year they choose a book to use as a central theme for a quilt. Each member reads the same book and from the thing they focus on in the book, or the ideas they like in the book, they create a quilt. The first year they did Sy Montgomery's book The Good Pig. It is a fascinating idea. The idea did not originate with this club. There are other book clubs around who have been doing this for some time and their results are really interesting.
Book reviews are always illuminating, and these quilts are a kind of visual book review. I thought I'd share some of them with you. The book the Under Covers Book Club chose this past year was The Divinity of Second Chances by Kaya McLaren. The title in itself is a wonderful theme and is the theme in the two novels that I've written.
There are too many photos and their provenance to present all at once here. I will feature a couple or three at a time.
Kaya McLaren is an elementary teacher Washington, quilter, and gifted writer of Church of the Dog, On The Divinity of Second Chances and is working on her current novel Embers. This is the author Kaya McLaren's own quilt and provenance explaining her thoughts on her quilt.
This was my daughter Janelle's approach to portraying the book as she explains in her provenance. Her original design is 51 x 61.
Wanda, on the other hand, read the book and it sent her on her own personal journey of second chances which she shares in the provenance.
The quilts based on Kaya McLaren's book are on display at Quiltworks at 926 Greenwood, Bend for the entire month of September 2011.
More later. If you are interested in how to set up a quilters/book club, leave a comment and I'll forward it to the Under Covers Book Club. They'll help you get started.
My best wishes,
Kenneth Fenter
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