My quilts are like pieces of art using fabric instead of a paintbrush. Drawing from thousands of fabrics cut into two inch squares, each quilt is hand designed on a white mat. I use four squares to represent a flower, or several squares in a row to impersonate a flower bed. Some of my quilts are laid out to create a color flow – from pink to purple to blue to yellow to orange – that is more abstract than an imitation of an image. Most of my quilts are reminiscent of Monet paintings, represented as an impressionistic garden or blend of colors.
Once the design is finished, I number each row and pick the squares up in a pile. They are then sewn on the machine – vertically first to create strips and then horizontally to complete the inside of the piece. Then comes the hard part – choosing a border. The border can make or break a piece and with so many colors working inside each design, the border fabric can draw out any of the colors from the quilt. I sometimes split the borders to pull out two different colors, or for example in my garden scenes, I will use a blue color at the top of the piece to represent sky and a green at the bottom to represent grass or a meadow. I try to use a strong color for the binding of the quilt, the strip that holds all the inner pieces together, to create a frame around the piece.
The quilting lines sewn on the piece add one more creative element to the image. For example, in the garden scene quilts, I try to use light images in one upper corner and quilt diagonal lines in a light yellow thread to represent the sun shining down. On other designs, I will quilt vertical wavy lines down the quilt to draw the viewer’s eye down the piece. Some pieces have very little quilting as the additional thread will take away from the overall image of the quilt.
Each piece is different and has it’s own unique personality. I hope you enjoy browsing through my quilts as much as I enjoyed making them
