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"Since childhood, I have been intrigued by the blips of light and roiling color some of us see when closing our eyes tightly, or when relaxing, waiting for sleep. In 1992 I developed my 'spontaneous log cabin' method of construction to finally bring my impressions to life. Using a variety of solid black and black-background fabrics, some of them cut into tiny strips, I constructed 460 blocks. Two-hundred fifty-six blocks were ultimately chosen for this quilt, and adrift in the floating colors and patterns are a few of the "fears" that crop up at night.
The piece is accentuated with machine embroidery, hand beading, and machine quilting in a variety of cotton and rayon threads. On the back is a giant pieced log cabin block, a reference to the quilt's traditional parentage.
My reluctance to use dark colors (also a "fear of the dark") is finally laid to rest."Label
"Originally an amateur painter, I came to quilting in 1987, and learned the traditional techniques. Resisting the tyranny of tradition from the start, however, even my early pieces reflected a desire for spontaneity. Flexibility and intuition are valuable to me; my work increasingly shows less of the comfortable and more of the unexpected in my quest to use quilt making as an art medium.
Using the emotional response to quilts as a stepping-off point for my own self-expression, I find that I am much more interested in using the elements of texture and color inherent in traditional quilts for my own purposes, to lay bare my deepest feelings, than in radically altering those components until the work becomes another sort of fiber art. I treasure that strong connection to the past, while rejecting noting that it occurs to me to add."Label
“I hope to convince all of my students and readers that there is no limit to what they can make with fabric. All that is required is an inspiration, a desire, and an open-minded, inquisitive approach to techniques one has not tried.
Excitement, pleasure, and satisfaction await the person willing to try a new method, practice it, and apply it in a new way to his or her ideas.”