In 2014 I went to visit my son and family in Myanmar where he was working for an NGO. What an amazing experience that was. I fell in love with the people and the place and was so excited to see the ways in which the country was changing. The optimism about the future was so apparent when talking with people. How sad that, once more, Myanmar is plunged into conflict, following the military coup of 2021.
One of the places we visited in was Bagan, a world heritage site in the north of the country. During the 9th-13thcenturies, Bagan was the capital city of the region and more than 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were built on the plains, of which over 2200 remain to the present day. It is truly an extraordinary sight to behold, bearing witness to the importance of Buddhism for the people of Myanmar. Indeed, in even the smallest village, temples and pagodas will dominate the landscape, with the most famous being the splendid golden Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon.
I decided to make this quilt as a tribute to the people of Myanmar, with my fingers crossed that soon the conflict might be brought to an end.
The quilt is appliqued, embellished with gold thread and heavy machine quilting, with long hand stitch sketching in the foreground. (24" x 24")
