Smoke Screens

                                                               

February's Four In Art challenge is based on literature.

One of my all-time favorite books is The Screwtape Letters

by CS Lewis. The book is about a senior devil, by the name 

of Screwtape, who teaches a junior devil about the art 

of tempting the enemy (which are the humans). 

I chose the quote... 

"The game is to have them running 

about with fire extinguishers 

when there is a flood."

I titled the quilt Smoke Screens,

because this is Screwtape's intent... to have the smoke

from the extinguisher prevent us from seeing the real

problem that is at hand. Essentially we're blinded. 

With this scenario people are going through 

the motions of thinking they are solving 

 problems, but with the wrong results.

I found CS Lewis' signature on the internet and 

printed it on red fabric for the fire extinguisher. 

For the actual quote I used Illustrator to

design the text and printed it out on the gray

background fabric (which is extra from a 

skirt I recently made). Since these are actually

CS Lewis' words I thought it would be good

to have them looking like they are coming out 

of the fire extinguisher.

I used silver thread to free motion quilt the text. 

Boy, I was seeing circles after all those little letters!

My youngest kiddo wanted to get in on the 

free motion quilting fun too. 

I really like this quote since it's about 

Screwtape teaching to distract humans during 

a crisis with the wrong resources to life's problems.

How often do we find ourselves in a flood, 

but are tempted or distracted with the wrong solution?

Close up of the fire extinguisher handle. I used silver 

heat-resistant fabric for the handle and nozzle.

Detail of silver text.

I liked the surface patterns pictured here with the

light reflecting on the silver thread.

Blue thread was used in the bottom half of the quilt to represent the flood that the fire extinguisher is being used on. I also added a some red, in the very narrow binding, to help draw the eye across the quilt, to provide some balance to that HUGE extinguisher. 

Blue fabric was added to the binding down where the flood is taking place.  

One valuable lesson I learned is... never free motion

quilt while you are on the phone with 

one of your college kids! 

I accidentally did this on the red knob on 

the fire extinguisher handle and decided the 

quilting there was thoughtless & messy. 

Back side of the Smoke Screen quilt, which looks like the 

aftermath of fighting a flood with a fire extinguisher...

total chaos in a lost battle. 

This is where Screwtape and his minions want us to be,

lost, distracted, exhausted and confused about all our efforts.

Personal Note: 

I have found many parallels between 

the temptations from the adversary and the 

instruction from Screwtape. To me, CS Lewis' genius lies in 

understanding the enemy and discerning his 

intents, purpose and temptations with us. 

I have been training Kyokoshin Karate for 7 years. 

One thing that I have learned from karate is that 

if you are to fight an enemy, you need to study 

them and know their weaknesses and strengths 

so that you can be triumphant. 

And so it is in life...

You can view other Four In Art quilts here.

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Elizabeth at OPQuilt.com 

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Susan at PatchworknPlay