I completed most of this banner back in the middle of August.  Then life, in the form of family time and trips, intervened for a while.

I’ve now returned to this project and “finished” it, although I think I still need to add some quilting to help hold the backing and the top together.  And I assembled a smaller banner, too, which I posted about yesterday.

This banner is 33.5″ wide, and 53.5″ long from the top of the banner’s hanging loops (hanging rail not included), to the bottom seams.  It’s made of 100% quilting cotton, with the panels produced using a variety of piecing and reassembly techniques.  There’s probably only $60 or so of materials in the quilt — but quite a number of hours in the production of the quilt top, which wasn’t easy.  I learned quite a bit about producing wall hangings, though, from making this quilt, and I’d like to make more of such things in the future.  If you know of a theme that might intrigue me, bring it to my attention?

In the meantime, it may be worth telling the story again.  Several years ago, the Yazidi were being hard-pressed upon by fundamentalist Muslims in northern Iraq and Syria (I think). They were much in the news, then, although the story has largely disappeared at this point.  They were significant as being a non-Muslim people in a Muslim-majority country… and it was mentioned that they worshipped a deity called Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. He was described as being a haughty dancer, whose dance would destroy the universe; however, a serpent had coiled about his legs, and slowed his dance, so that the world would not be destroyed so rapidly.  For whatever reason, the story stuck with me, and I chose to produce a quilted wall hanging some years after I first heard the story — a representation of Melek Taus in peacock and universe fabric (which glows in the dark!), blue to represent the vault of the heavens, and gold/black fabric to represent the serpent entwining the Peacock Angel’s legs.

The wall hanging is available on Etsy. It is not a Yazidi ritual object, nor am I Yazidi nor a worshipper of Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel of the Yazidi faith.  This is an artist’s response to the news, and if you would like it for your house, office, or other space, it is yours to have — and to treat as a sacred object or not as you please.

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