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Finding Myself Within Patterns

My parents stressed the importance of taking care of yourself. This included skills like sewing, cooking, and growing things.  My father grew up on a farm in Arkansas.  At night the family came together and helped making quilts. It was survival.  My mother grew up making her doll clothes and baby doll blankets. She emphasized perfection as she walked me through seam allowance.

In middle school classes were offered in wood shop and home economics. Middle School was inline with what my family valued. My mother and I bonded over many hours in fabric shops. My first skirt I made in school was a blue and white calico ruffled skirt.  Wearing my skirt to school for the first time was a proud moment. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn the complexity of making at such a young age.

My sister-in-law introduced me to quilting. I am grateful for my mom’s perfection, but quilting allows me freedom that sewing clothes did not allow me. Traditional Quilting has patterns to follow as clothes do, but I have found away around the rules. It’s a balance between historical designs, and playing with contemporary approaches.

Integrating the Parts

Integrated actions that draw on meditation lead the mind towards introspection. Gardening is a combination of physical work, experimentation, time, and observation. Garden observations brought to the sewing machine turns time into a rumination on the minute. Having fun experimenting on shorter, smaller projects.

Deconstructed Banana Leaf

An avid gardener understands the importance of ornamental plants. It’s the layered values beyond the aesthetics that draws me equally to gardening, and quilting. Towering banana trees shade the pond. Shade keeps algae from growing while providing a heat blocker for the aquatic critters. Human size leaves double as utilitarian privacy fence. Their gargantuan size brings back childlike thoughts of Gulliver’s discovery of the Liliputians. Chickens scratch in the green shade.

The quilt sketch began with a photograph of veins of a banana leaf and manipulate in Adobe Capture. Contrasting greens combine technology and traditional quilting. Electric energy powers awes equally to the strength of the original source. The banana trees grow into a dramatic moment.

While loving vibrating visual data, acts of gardening and quilting transcend the outside. Ultimately, time spent in endless work of repetition is meditation.

All the Little Pieces

Scrappy quilts use little bits of leftover fabric. After a little hiatus from my sewing machine, I jumped in using what I had easily available to me. Electric is the moment I look for when creating. Energy from contrasting color and pattern gets me motivated. Offset checkered fabric makes rhythm akin to improvisational jazz causes the retina to find the beat. Offset checkered sections look randomly chaotic, but all is playfully planned pairings finishing the puzzle.

Hairpin Turns Ahead

This quilt traversed across great distances. Pictorial quilts start with a plan, and usually end with the same plan. Quilts based on patterns have endless possibilities.

Vintage craft books bring back memories of childhood. I taught myself how to knit, crochet, macrame, sewing from my mother’s books. I love a good diagram. A page from “Joy of Craft” from 1975 inspired my trip down a winding road of my own making. The yellow and orange fabric I purchased were too close in value to pop off like this silhouette. A pictorial quilt turned quickly into a land of abstraction.

Thread and fabric connect a quilter to all the quilts to a tradition, and to all fellow contemporaries. Under and over basket weaving is a similar tradition. I tried to combine my two interests, but the yellow and orange still fell flat.

Weaving turned into geometric diamonds whose complexities lost shape the further I ventured. The problem with geometry is it either has to be way off to be awkwardly cool, or perfect. I am not perfect! I reached the time to leave the limitations of two solid colors.

Calico fabrics are what I look for. They originated in Calicut, India during the 11th century. I think of them worn by frontier women from the 17th century, with faded floral patterns, and prairie soil stains. It’s the history. Using something old in a contemporary way. I’ve always felt like I a past life is still impacting me.

A rug weaving book inspired me to turn this quilt into a distorted landscape. Scissors are an important part of my sewing process.

Intuitive thought is an individual experience. It’s hard to explain why something works visually. Quilting can be about process based on determination. Completion achieved by trying and tenacity, piecing and patience. It’s a meditation. It’s a belief in what is visually right for oneself. The importance of a journey brings inspiration for another trip around the maker’s land.

She Plays With Snakes

Pillow shams for the snake show at the Electric Shed Gallery, Nashville. I altered vintage quilt squares with my hand appliqued snakes. I have heard the vintage squares called both Dutch Girl, or Sunbonnet Sue. I picked them up at an antique store when I first started quilting. I held onto them waiting for the perfect project. I am drawn to the calico prints that look like they have come from a different time. The border fabric came from my calico collection. The quilting stitches are also snakes spreading out across the surface of the fabric.

She’s Got the Devil in Her

An Evening Around the Fire

It’s like the song by Cedell Davis and Ayron Jones, “She’s Got the Devil in Her”. I wanted a quilt that changed as it was folded. One evening we were sitting around the wood stove in the studio. I was talking about my brother’s Mad magazines. When I was a kid I loved looking at the fold out art. I wasn’t interested in the rest of it. When my stepdaughter was younger she would look for vintage Mad magazines when we went antique shopping. After talking that night, I had the plan.

But How?

It was tricky. I wanted to involve my talented step daughter, and husband in the processes. She started the drawing with a woman surrounded by plants. I was looking for more of an edge. I was thinking angel folded into devil, but that also seemed easy in subject matter. My husband and I went back and forth tweaking it on paper till it worked. We kept her original woman, but turned the plants into a devilish forest. I don’t usually work with a blue print when quilting, but the idea was too good to not do it. It’s pretty rare for me to start a quilt with an idea and have it end the same as my original idea.

After we got the drawing the right, I enlarged it on paper the same size as the center panel. If I was to do it again, I would have made the paper the same size as the finished quilt. I think that might have helped to keep it all lined up. I’m pretty sure there was and easier way to do this, but my process was to trace the image on the white fabric with a quilting marker. I cut 3/4″-1″ strips of fabric and appliquéd them down over the marked lines. I’m pretty sure there was an easier way to do that, but I usually jump in to projects without knowing fully what I am doing. I also appliquéd the leaves, and the eyes in green. I had been looking for a reason to use toile for the border around the center panel. I felt like it not only add to the size, but added to the story.

I finished it by free motion quilting a floral design to add to the jungle design.

Quilty Pleasure Show

It was apart of the Quilty Pleasure show at the Elephant Gallery. I loved sharing it with people. It was nice to engage with people who saw it on social media, and were excited to see it in person. It was nice showing with other great fiber artists. The show was a good kick in the ass for me to get my quilts back out there again. It was a good kick in the ass to stay focused.

The finished quilt is a playful take on the naughty and nice.

High Priestess of Heart Rocks: A Quilt Making Journey

Maria is one of the high priestess that walks amongst us. Even those in such positions needs a moment of emotional support, and reassuring. Living so far away from a friend that needs a nurturing hand is difficult. Quilt making has become a popular art product for showing, selling, and promoting individual ideas. The core value of a quilt is to protect, and provide comfort. As an artist, sometimes I need to stop with all the big ideas, and make something for someone who needs a little love.

While sitting on the river bank, Maria and I found our private spots to meditate. We were both dealing with loses. We both offered our own individual healing thoughts to the river by writing on the water’s surface how we envisioned our future. As a gift, the river gave her a heart rock. I’m calling her the High Priestess of Heart Rocks. We all need someone who has a heart that is solid as a rock, and not someone who is stone hearted.

I was getting distracted from quilting by my love crafting all things. I was wanting to return to my quilt making routine. At the same time I knew a kind gift like a quilt would be nice for Maria, and I knew the process would be kind for my own heart. Hand appliqué is a process of clearing your mind of all the noise. It’s giving total attention to your needle, your thread, your material, and the path you are stitching on. This is the quilt that brought me back to my sewing meditation. When I quilt all the hard stuff in the world around me disappears. I love tiny stitches. I love them even more when thinking about someone I love. I finished the quilt by free motion quilting hearts flowing down the quilt like a river full of heart rocks.

Portrait of Maria in hand appliqué. Here she is a strong, peaceful, independent woman finding joy in a simple moment. She is almost skipping, or dancing around the flower patch. She is breathing in the healing scents of nature.

The Party is Over

I love sharing our home with friends. The day after one of our biggest parties ever, my husband I were outside getting motivated to clean. The cooler had a few ice cold seed beers left in it. We cracked a couple open and sat down. Willie Nelson’s song “The Party’s Over” was playing. We replayed the great time we had with our friends. It was a perfect summer’s day, the perfect moment. I knew I had to make this quilt.

Previous to the party, I purchased a new vintage quilting book. It had a page with pieced letters that I wanted to use. I loved this message because it would always have a good memory, and it’s the perfect end of night message that anyone could relate to. Some quilts I make for myself. Some quilts I make thinking I might try to sell. My intention was to sell this one. I did not. It’s too nostalgic.

When I finished this quilt our country had elected a new president. Putting pictures of this quilt on social media made me realize that others could read a different meaning behind these words. Timing is everything.

Cumberland Plateau

The Cumberland Plateau is one of my favorite places in Tennessee. My husband’s family were original settlers in Fall Creek Falls area. Before I met my husband, I had recurring dreams that I was in a place similar to Spencer. When he took me there for the first time, it felt like I had been there before. I’m not sure how I feel about past lives, but I’m am pretty sure there is a connection. When thinking about past lives we often wonder if we were a priestess, or priest, rich or poor, good or bad. I prefer to think about the land that might have held us.

When I am in walking among the trees, or driving through the plateau landscape, it’s about the color green. From a distance, off towards the horizon, everything is blue.

Cry, Cry, Cry

There are two kinds of tears that I cry. Crying can be sad, but better are the tears of joy. I made “Cry,Cry,Cry” for the needs of both. No matter what is happening in our country, there is no denying the beauty of our landscape. Nature is very important to me. This quilt sees, smells, and eats up all the beauty. Sometimes life can be difficult. Sad crying is best done under a nurturing quilt. This quilt is a crying quilt.