I thought it might be fun to share some of the quilts I have hanging on my walls. The vast majority of them are my designs; ideas that bloomed in my head and had to be let out. Like any craft or skill, I have improved with time. Each creation teaches me something new: a dyeing technique, a new piecing method, an experiment in color and shadow. It entertains me and covers the white walls! I like graphic, abstract shapes and I do love the petroglyphs and aesthetics left by the original Americans of the Southwest.
In 1994 I waited for our first full monsoon season in Tucson. Rain is rare; it is a desert! And monsoon is highly anticipated!
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| C'mon Monsoon! |
The lightening rises up from the clouds in this hand quilted, machine pieced wall quilt. I was new to fabric dyeing, and had lots of value gradations to use! This quilt also commemorates the hurricane Nora which was predicted to drown us. I inserted the two drops of rain that came from the storm into the quilting!
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| Trilogy |
I started teaching myself how to use light and shadow. I dyed fabric from a pale brick red to dark gray and ran the stream of light diagonally. Making triangles the featured shape was a natural for a study of three! Machine pieced and quilted.
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Silk Strings
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This bright beauty is an all silk top: charmeuse and crepe de chine. It is the lightest weight wall hanging imaginable and it shines, as only silk can! The colors were all hand dyed or painted and the black was commercially dyed. This one was also machine pieced and quilted.
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| Anasazi Doorway |
Another all silk top created with paper piecing. Have you ever seen the ruins in Chaco Canyon? The buildings were entered from a hole in the roof and the rooms were separated by these keyhole shaped doors. Their doors did not look out on the landscape, but mine does! I hand painted the silk crepe and machine pieced and quilted this wall hanging.
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| Stained Glass Dragon |
I made this wall hanging from an actual pattern! All the fabric I hand dyed, except the black! I marbled fabric for his hair/mane?! Lots of bias strips were made for the "leading". These were fixed with adhesive and then sewn into place.
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| Flaming Pineapple |
This wall quilt is destined to be a full size quilt. "Pineapple" is a technique for paper piecing the blocks off-center, from the basic log cabin pattern. I think the juxtaposition of the fiery reds and yellows on top of the cool teals was ideal. It has the depth I was looking for and I worked out some pretty nifty quilting lines. This piece is only 19" x 13.5". The finished blocks are only 2.75" square. A real miniature!
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| OpArt Study |
An OpArt Study. I saw a flyer with this design printed on it and thought I had to make it in fabric. It took some figuring to get the strips cut and arranged. Once I had it down, I created a bed quilt for my man. That quilt is not currently out, so I'll show you a photo of it at a later time! By now, I'm sure you have noticed that I frequently work out my ideas on a smaller scale before I apply them to a "usable" size! This enables me to estimate the yardage I need to dye and hopefully solve the puzzles!
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| Autumn Lattice |
We were living in a house with glass doors facing the west. In the fall the Sonoran desert has some of the most beautiful and gaudiest sunsets around! Oranges with bits of blue and greens from the mesquite trees. I designed this block from scratch initially as a value study in grays and black, and then converted it to color. I set the lattice on top so it floats above the orange background. This one was hand quilted, and fits a queen size bed. Quilts tend to be square or rectangular, this was my first departure from those boundaries!
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| Favorite 'Glyphs |
This wall quilt has a couple of my favorite petroglyphs: the dreamer and the dreamed along with something that appears to be a window, but really isn't! I tried out a a technique called "ghost layers and color washes" in this one. Each of the colors: cobalt blue, kilt green and violet were dyed in seven values to create this illusion.
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| Peloton Pile-up |
Based on the traditional "Double Wedding Ring" pattern, mine takes a bit of a non-traditional twist. I had amassed a pretty decent stash of hand-dyed fabrics and wanted to clear out the cache, so I could dye more (of course!)! I separated my fabrics into 5 levels of light to dark and cut it into strips of varying widths and then sewed them together. I did have to dye the gray gradation for the rims/rings. I sketched this out with watercolor pencils and the quilt began! We were watching an early stage of the Tour de France which had a massive crash. All those colorful jerseys and wheels led to the name!
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| Prayers for Rain |
This is a whole cloth quilt. Meaning: one piece of fabric with the design hand-painted on. I first dyed the background a pale pinkish/lavender. I made stencils from freezer paper for the border and flowers. The center design is borrowed from the Acoma pueblo peoples pottery designs. I enlarged the motif, drew it on and then painted all the elements with thickened dyes. Fertility, rain and harvest are symbolized. I machine quilted this with lines radiating outward from the center design.
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| Simply Squares |
Sometimes simple is a relief! What if you just use the square? A basic nine-patch with borders. And squares within squares within squares...you get the idea!
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| Logan's Quilt |
Made for our first "great" baby! This one was made of orphaned blocks. After I constructed "Peloton Pile-up" I had strippy fabric waiting for a home. I combined it with greens and blues into random size triangles, squares and rectangles. I arranged it on my design wall so that it appeared to sparkle! Improvisation was the method here! And it was fun! I quilted a design with a pony (Logan's mom is an animal lover- major understatement!) and sent it on its way!
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| The New Face |
I detailed the creation of Eli's quilt in my early entries. Eli is our second "great" baby! Improvisation was the way again with more blocks that were waiting for a perfect home! I tried my best to keep it off the straight and narrow, so to speak and it was joy to make for this little boy! I get to meet him soon!!!
That's the short tour! I do have more quilt art hanging around the house and on the shelves. Next time I have them out, I'll share those with you. I really enjoy coloring fabric. The methods of application and manipulation are seemingly endless! I found another book at Bookman's on "Convergence" quilts. Its pretty cool and I am playing with those techniques. Wait until you see what's next! I hope you enjoyed my quilt tour!
By the way, we just had our first monsoon storm! Fantastic!
