A California Evensong

“Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night” used to startle me in the Evensong service, and when I started making quilts it struck me as a good phrase to sleep under. Written in the days of unlit streets and alleyways, when it wasn’t uncommon for a fever to steal away a soul during the night, its meaning was renewed by the global Covid 19 pandemic, when I made the first Evensong quilt.

A plea not just for repose, comfort and the stillness of evening, but for a protective shield against assault, despair and disease until the break of day. All faiths surely have such a prayer, and the same benediction finds its secular way into poetry, popular song and proverbial wisdom. Dream a Little Dream of Me, written by Wilbur Schwandt, Fabian Andre and Gus Khan, was first recorded in 1931 but made famous in 1968 by the unmistakably sweet-and-gravelly voice of ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot. 

The latest Evensong quilt, is patchworked in Haight-Ashbury thrift-shop colours subtly legible against a field of linen, chambray and vintage denim. Festively bound striped Indian viscose sateen, it is hand-quilted in close to 300m of golden yellow thread.

To my ear, “Sweet dreams ‘til sunbeams find you” has a metaphysical nerve worthy of John Donne’s “busy old fool”. That is, not until you see the sun rise, but until its beams come and get you. 

SWEET DREAMS patchwork hand quilt in linen, cotton and viscose; 200 x 200cm.