My Chicken Pattern - Also a Class
Henny Penny - 20" x 19" Inspired by the hens of Ruth B. McDowell, I wanted to try my hand at designing my own chicken pattern and quilt.
Close-up - Henny Penny's Head - Pattern started
by choosing an eye fabric first. Notice the corn-on-the-cob fabric around the eye.
by choosing an eye fabric first. Notice the corn-on-the-cob fabric around the eye.
Purple Hen - 21" x 23" - A purple hen? Once I got started I saw feathers in fabrics of many colors. If you look at the wing fabric closely, you can see the fabric is actually shells.
Rooster Head in progress - I love the lively background fabric.
Rudbekiah in Monet's garden - 23" x 20 - This was my second flower pattern I designed on my own. It is from a photograph we took in Monet's Garden in Giverny, France.
Hawaiian Hibiscus - 22" x 18" - This is the first flower pattern I designed from a photo we took while in Hawaii. I purposely filled the frame and went off the edge with the petals. First and only time I used beads on a quilt.
Native Ladder #1 - 32" x 41" - This kiva ladder was photographed on a trip to the southwest. It is one of many ladder quilts to come. The happy accident that is the border grew out of the book by Rayna Gillman about improvisational quilting, Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts. I was using scraps of fabric and piecing them randomly. When I threw them up on the wall, they happened to be next to the large ladder and I fell in love.
Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries - This quilt is a composite of two photographs my husband took of the cherry trees on my parent's property at Flathead Lake. The whole east shore of the lake is planted in cherry trees. This quilt is one that lived in my design book for months. I collected reds for many months to get just the right shine on the cherries. It was tricky to make the cherries distinct from each other. The background fabric was a lucky find at a quilt shop in Berkley, CA after a trip to see the Giants play baseball. I loved the busy movement and color of the rectangles.
Swiss Chard - 20" x 25" - I loved the bright colors of the chard. It was fun to mix greens and blues to make the leaves. I wanted them to feel wrinkly like the real chard.
English Scooter - 40" x 30"
Designed from a photo I took of a scooter covered in colored duct tape outside of London. Started in a Ruth McDowell Class. The original picture had a brick wall in the background, but I knew that would detract from my subject. So instead I found the two bluish fabrics that were light enough to combine for a more neutral background. This is one where I really worked on making the border wonky as well.
Designed from a photo I took of a scooter covered in colored duct tape outside of London. Started in a Ruth McDowell Class. The original picture had a brick wall in the background, but I knew that would detract from my subject. So instead I found the two bluish fabrics that were light enough to combine for a more neutral background. This is one where I really worked on making the border wonky as well.
Hawthorne Bridge Supports (quilt top), 2014 - Designed from a photo I took while walking the bridges. I loved the strength these shapes represented. The whole thing is made using Violet Craft's Waterfront Park collection of fabric, which was part of the challenge for the Bridge Quilt show.
My Grandma Coats with her hound dog and the Post Office cabin - 49" x 38"
Started in a Ruth McDowell workshop. My grandmother was very dear to me. My dad and uncles built the cabin out of railroad ties from an abandoned railroad line near Shoshone, WY. My grandma was the postmistress and would meet the train each day to collect a bag of mail in a wheelbarrow. She always had a dog and wore the typical house dress of the era with an apron over it. My memories of my time spent at this house are my "wild-west" childhood memories. We would make traps to catch large black ants and build cages with hanging carrots to catch wild rabbits. We would feed feral kittens, dodge rattlesnakes on walks and try to avoid scorpions and cactus.
Started in a Ruth McDowell workshop. My grandmother was very dear to me. My dad and uncles built the cabin out of railroad ties from an abandoned railroad line near Shoshone, WY. My grandma was the postmistress and would meet the train each day to collect a bag of mail in a wheelbarrow. She always had a dog and wore the typical house dress of the era with an apron over it. My memories of my time spent at this house are my "wild-west" childhood memories. We would make traps to catch large black ants and build cages with hanging carrots to catch wild rabbits. We would feed feral kittens, dodge rattlesnakes on walks and try to avoid scorpions and cactus.
Bridge at Bibler Gardens, Kalispell, MT - Started in a Ruth McDowell workshop. I made this for my mother. We took a trip here together to see the amazing gardens. I decided to try to only use my collection of Asian fabrics for this quilt. That almost worked except for the bridge bed, water and some forest backgrounds. I found the red fabric with gold ginko leaves right away. The bridge bed has words on it and I had to cut it carefully to make sure the lines of it matched the direction it needed to. The hardest part was trying to make the deep background look like a forest and not just a solid block of dark green. I had to find just the right fabrics that had some depth to them and bits of white that look like filtered light. This quilt took months to finish while playing with fabric for the background.
Dad's Mailboxes, College Station, Texas - 50" x 40" - First quilt completed in a Ruth McDowell class. I came to her first class with a suitcase of fabric and a folder full of photos. I didn't know which photo to pick and she said something that helped. Pick one that has meaning to you. This had meaning because it is right down the road from my Dad's house in College Station, Texas. Every morning I would walk this road with my Uncle Bo. We had come to care for my dad who was dying of cancer. I loved the way the mailboxes were each unique and kind of wonky. Ruth suggested I give each one it's own personality. I learned about transitions from tree tops to sky and how to pick the right fabric for that tricky transition, although my tree tops look like mountains a bit...should have done curved edges instead of straight.