Monument Valley Mesa

44 x 64 

This quilt was one of the pieces documenting the many trips our family has taken throughout the Southwest, camping, hiking and exploring.  I have always loved the receding border designed by Angela Madden in her book “Pieceful Scenes” and used her directions along with my Electric Quilt software to design this piece.  I incorporated yarns and beads to bring the scene to life.  I also used Shiva Paintstiks to add texture and dimension to the mesas.

56" x 41"

I have been studying with Workshop On The Web with lessons by various teachers worldwide under the guidance of Maggie Grey. I have been studying texture in textiles as well as Free-Motion Embroidery and Mixed Media Art.  I have been introduced to many unusual materials and methods for making more interesting and realistic quilts.  Road To Stonehenge was an experiment with flannel chenille inset into a quilt.  Chenille reminds me of a wheat field and what is a wheat field without a crop circle and what is a crop circle without a background setting of Stonehenge?   Hence this idea was born. If you look closely you can see Stonehenge made out of Sculpy beads in the lower right hand corner inside the dark green circle.  I used several different colors of flannel, hand-dyed  fabrics, yarn and beads. 

  This quilt was designed especially for my parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary in the summer of 2001.  They have been active in helping others all of their lives and I wanted to honor my mother with something that she could take with her until the end of her life.  I designed it as closely as I could to a bridal bouquet in her favorite colors in a size that fits into their décor.  I also tried some new techniques in this quilt and I am pleased with the heirloom quality of the final result. 

Pima Cotton, Polished cotton blends. lace, braid, satin ribbon, organdy ribbon, pearls,Machine Appliquéd and Machine Quilted

This quilt is a copy of the one that was designed especially for my parents 50th wedding anniversary in the summer of 2001.  I decided to make one for myself in slightly different colors and fabrics.  I used 25 different upholstery fabrics for the bouquet in the center and machine quilted the sateen background with the feather design.

48” x 38”

Flannel whole cloth ground with flannel cutout flowers and leaves Machine Embroidered and Quilted

 I originally designed this pattern for Andover Fabrics and their Museum of American Folk Art Fabric Line to be presented at Quilt Market in Houston, TX 2002.  I originally used Chintz fabric for the cutouts in the floral arrangement but made another version in flannel in a different colorway to capture the warm appeal of an old fashioned quilt.  Both are shown here – the second one belongs to Andover and was sold to Keepsake Quilting catalog to be repackaged and sold as a kit called, “Chintz Roses”. 

                                                Sold

54” x 54”

Hand-dyed cotton, commercial cotton, Monofilament thread, rayon yarn, Machine Pieced and Quilted

 This quilt is an original reproduction of an antique design called “Spinning Spools”.  I was asked to update and produce the design, pattern and directions to be published in a book entitled, “Heirloom Quilts From Old Tops”  in 2001.  The authors, Pat Morris and Jeannette Muir  showcased antique quilt patterns with a contemporary flair shown side-by-side in their second book on the subject.  I used fabrics in the pure hues of the Colorwheel and included shaded greys in the background.  I named it Colorplay because I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the color and value range.  This was the first quilt I designed using the Electric Quilt Software Program.

The Quilter’s Guild to which I belonged  offered a challenge to its members to create a finished work with one difficult fabric by the following year.  This quilt is the result and is an experiment using grayed fabrics in a fairly close value range.  I named it “Evening Star” because evening is the time of day when colors become muddy and less distinct.  The silver quilting thread represents the twinkling of the first stars that appear at dusk.  This is also my first attempt at designing my own quilt with folding tissue and graph paper – a technique I learned about from Jinny Beyer. The borders were very challenging and I learned that the ¼ inch seam allowance is extremely important when piecing together such small seams.

Commercial cotton; hand-dyed cotton, nylon sheer, tulle, polyester, wool and cotton thread. 

This quilt was designed for the Andover Fabric Company to be displayed in their booth at Quilt Market in Houston, TX in October 2003.  It was designed to display the various fabrics in two fabric lines designed by Gail Kessler called “Jellyscapes” and “Quilter’s Paradise”.  I used free-motion thread work in the embellishment of the trees and foreground shrubbery.

64" x 48"
Cotton, Cotton Blends, Machine Pieced and Quilted

This quilt is a memory quilt for me – much like a photo album.  It was a scrap quilt made up of fabrics from my fabric collection which I had built over the first 10 years of my fabric collecting journey. I arranged the colored fans along the order of a landscape with sky colors along the top; dark forms representing mountains in the middle; blues near the bottom to represent water; greens and browns in the foreground for land and 2 red flowers in the corner. 

This quilt taught me the hard-earned lesson of “always wash your fabrics first”.  The entire top row of red fabrics stained the white background pink and could not be removed with any conventional means.  I had to either get really creative or throw it away!  I decided to get creative and painted the stains away with acrylic craft paint and the Quilt Police haven’t caught up with me yet!

45 x 45"

This design is a study in utilizing border prints to attain complexities that cannot be reproduced any other way.  Only two different prints are used in this quilt but they are rotated in such a way that a design emerges that is virtually unknown or unplanned ahead of time. This style of fabric and geometric patterning imitates the Oriental rugs of the East but can be enjoyed on the wall instead of the floor. 

45 x 45”

The following two quilts were commissioned by a friend to be given as gifts to others.  They were designed using the fusible appliqué method of construction and were machine pieced and quilted