Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada - The 2007 Story Save Quilt



Norma Lundberg

The Snow Queen

The block was inspired by my great love for Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, my favorite since childhood being The Snow Queen. Over the years, each reading has revealed more meaning, and it is a story I would love to be able to tell in its entirety one day. It is a long story, but so rich, and always wonderful.

I felt lucky to find fabric with tiny snowflakes on it, for originally I had planned just to use strong blue fabric and applique a large snowflake on it. The search for just the right snowflake took time, and I have never done any machine applique, so that was a major experiment. I also wanted flowers of some kind - ideally red roses - to be part of the block, but felt stymied until I came across a new book by Rebecca West, A Fresh Twist on Fabric Folding, with instructions for making origami fabric flowers. I chose a simple five-petaled flower (for who could possibly recreate a rose?) and used various shades of red, thinking of that colour also as a heart colour, because it is Gerda's love for Kay that redeems him.

The completed block, with all its technical flaws (which grieved me, wanting it to be perfect, as it would be in the Snow Queen's kingdom of the perfect geometries of ice and snow), represents, perhaps all too obviously, the snowflake being 'broken up' by the flowers scattered randomly over it, recalling the last part of the Andersen story:

"Then they took each other by the hand, and went forth from the great palace of ice. They spoke of the grandmother, and of the roses on the roof, and as they went on the winds were at rest, and the sun burst forth .... Gerda and Kay went hand-in-hand towards home; and as they advanced, spring appeared more lovely with its green verdure and its beautiful flowers. Very soon they recognized the large town where they lived, and the tall steeples of the churches, in which the sweet bells were ringing a merry peal as they entered it, and found their way to their grandmother's door."

I wonder now about the possibility of a green background for the snowflake, but in fact the blue for me is symbolic of the dark blue winter sky with all its stars, and I wanted the block to be more evocative than literal.

The grandmother in the story is especially meaningful for me, not only because she had told stories to Gerda and Kay. It was my Danish grandmother, who was born in the little coastal town of Nyborg on the island of Fyn, who gave me a beautiful copy of the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, gilt-edged thin pages bound in dark wine-coloured leather, with black and white illustrations of some of the stories (the only one I can remember is from The Red Shoes, with little Karen cursed by her love of dancing - the one Andersen tale that truly horrifies me). Alas in my first year of university I lent the Andersen fairy tale book to someone who was then a dear friend and never got it back, for the friend suddenly moved away and I never heard from him again. I only hope that the book, wherever it may be now, is being treasured. The book has vanished, the story never will.