Label Type
Artist CommentaryLabel
"Quilt making is an artistic expression using fabrics. It's exciting and rewarding to bring a vision to life using bits and pieces of wonderful fabrics.
I first became interested in quilting in late 1999 shortly after retiring from 32 years in the communications industry. My introduction came by way of the television series 'Simply Quilts' with Alex Anderson. Fascinated with the beauty and variety of quilts aired on the show, I knew I had to try my hand at creating one.
After taking some basic classes from a local quilt shop and reading a variety of quilting books, I began to practice and experiment with various methods and techniques. I quickly developed a passion for hand appliqué and hand quilting.
My first quilt, an original hand appliquéd and hand quilted design, was a 51" x 55" wall quilt featuring nine hummingbirds surrounded by colorful floral vines. I started with commercial patterns for the first hummingbird and a variety of floral designs. However, since I wasunable to find commercial patterns for that many hummingbirds or block designs exactly as I envisioned, I began designing my own patters.
My second quilt 'Feathered Beauties' is also an original design with all original patterns. From concept to completion took approximately 2 years."Label
"Feathered Beauties is an original design inspired by my love of nature and my fascination with the variety of birds that visit my home in Larkspur, Colorado. Many of the birds shown in the quilt don’t actually visit my area, so I had to rely on field guides, photographs, and lots of birding books to draft the patterns.
I used 100% cotton fabrics. With very few exceptions, the colorations in the birds were achieved with fabric selection. I did use ink for the black lines of the blue jay and I used a tiny bit of white paint as highlights on the green jay. Everything else was done with fabric.
For the appliqué, all hand done by needleturn, I mostly used Metler 100% cotton embroidery thread, some YLI 100% silk threads and #12 sharps needles. For the quilting I used Metler 100% cotton hand quilting thread. The batting is Hobbs Heirloom Cotton. A polyester batting was used for the trapunto. The quilt was hand quilted using a lap hoop.
The entire quilt was hand made with the exception of the first stage of binding which was done by machine. The label including a listing of the birds was computer generated and printed on cotton fabric."Label
"For me, quiltmaking is a perfect blend of the old and the new. I like to create fresh designs, then make the quilt the old-fashioned way - by hand. With each quilt I hope to craft a piece that is visually appealing and constructed with top quality workmanship. Since I quilt purely for my own enjoyment, as long as i am pleased with the finished piece, then I have achieved my goal.
I love bird-watching and other outdoor activities, and I studied the field guides and photographs before making my original drawings for the 24 birds in this quilt. I used mostly large-scale printed commercial fabrics to achieve the subtle shading effects and then, I constructed each bird using needle-turn appliqué and sewed the finished units to the background. My favorite part of the process is hand quilting, and I spent over one thousand hours quilting this piece."