Why the Kazakh Dream Quilts are not finished at the bottom edge?
There are two possible explanations for the unfinished edge of most Dream Quilts.
The first story, and the more poetic of the two, is that Kazakh people say that they leave the quilts unfinished in order to keep life going. Life never ends, and this is expressed with the unfinished side of the quilts.
Often the same thing can be seen with many Kazakh rugs. The artisan will take one color from the left side
and another from the right side. This seemingly inconsistent theme represents the continuing process of creating.
The other explanation for the unfinished edge is less poetic, but also plausible. The walls in a yurta (Kazakh house) are not high and the ceiling slopes upward towards the center. The quilts would be hung on the wall (there is of course only one wall in a round yurta...) and the unfinished bottom side slips under the rug or behind the bed.
Out of about 100 quilts there will be only a few with all four sides complete.
When we first began selling the quilts we were going to send them to a artisan to finish the fourth edge. Many people said that we should leave them in their original condition. We decided that if no one has done this in the last many years we shouldn't do it either. On the website we leave off the bottom side and occasionally part of the borders for quick download time without sacrificing the quality of the images.
Learn a real story...
When the Soviet Era moved into Kazakhstan, many families from all walks of life fled the country. An elderly woman tells a story of her flight to Mongolia.
Her family was fleeing across the country in a caravan of horses and camels, carrying with them only what they could hold. They fled over the mountains and across the beautiful steppes of the country. After several days of travel she and her family came to the border. They all paused, looking back on their homeland, knowing that this might be the last time that they would ever see their country. She was overcome with grief and love. When she looked back across the steppes, all she could see was beautiful poppies. The entire steppe was in bloom with the beautiful pinks of the flowers. As far as she could see, all the way to foot of the mountains barely visible in the distance, the blossoms moved in the wind, swaying in the sunlight. She then turned away with tears in her eyes and holding that memory to sustain her through her years of exile.
Whenever she would think of her country, the woman would remember that image of the beautiful flowers stretching out across her motherland. The quilts she made always had floral patterns to remind her of the image of that day long ago, when she left her home. It was all she had. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, many years later, and after the long journey back to Kazakhstan, she would still use images of the flowers of her country to remind her of the day she looked back on her beautiful country, not sure if she would ever return...
www. kazakhcrafts.com/? id=almaty_kazakhstan_kazakstan&g=8&pi= 0&name=Dream %20Quilts&name2=Kaza kh_Traditional_Desig n_Decor_Ornament_Emb roidery_Work