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"I use primarily silk fabrics in my artwork. I sometimes use scraps of silk cut from recycled clothing—just as quilters used to do many years ago—but I also use new and hand-dyed silks.
I love silks because of their vibrant colors, the soft feel of the material in my hands when I work, and the incomparable luster, which enhances the quilting stitching. I have developed ways to overcome the negative qualities of silk fabrics, such as their slipperiness and tendency to fray.
In my hand-pieced quilt, “Tumbling Blocks,” for example, I used a process similar to English paper piecing but substituted fusible interfacing for the paper. In that way, I could leave the interfacing inside, instead of removing it, to give the quilt structure.
I pieced this quilt in snatches of free time over the course of several years. I first made all the colored blocks using light, medium and dark shades of each color. As my collection of blocks grew I pondered how to arrange them, I finally had the idea of using the colored tumbling blocks within larger, black and white tumbling blocks.
The only new fabric I bought for this quilt was the white and black spotted silk at the bottom. I wanted to give the background the effect of a giant tumbling block, using black, grey and white, but plain white, which I had in my fabric stash, was too stark. I finished the quilt with free-motion quilting on my home sewing machine using silk threads.
My quilt designs are typically abstract and often develop intuitively. Spatial illusions, such as dimension or transparency, commonly appear."Label
"The quilt is my own interpretation of the traditional Tumbling Blocks design. It was hand pieced, using a method similar to English paper piecing but with interfacing rather than paper. It is made entirely of silk fabrics, most of which I cut from recycled garments. I did the free-motion quilting on my domestic sewing machine using silk threads.
I usually make quilts entirely by machine, but this was a portable project that I worked on over the course of several years during lunch breaks, while traveling, or while sitting outdoors listening to the birds, for example. As I worked, I thought about the women of the 19th and early 20th centuries who hand-stitched quilts during snatches of free time to provide necessary comfort and warmth for their families. They would use dressmaking scraps or whatever materials they could find and often included silks."