Landscapes

My very first landscape was in response to the Coast Quilters Guild annual challenge in 2000. Because it was the millenium, the piece had to have a time related theme and incorporate a time piece. I took a quote from Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: "Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away."

Actually what happened is I made a landscape based on a photograph I had taken of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden in spring. The quilt was very flat so I added a stream. Then the challenge theme was announced and I added the timepiece which is actually one of the rocks in the lower left corner.

Time is But a River

2000

32 x 24 inches

My friend Carol Barringer took a workshop some years back from Carol Bryer Fallert and, with permission, herself gave a workshop to share the techniques she learned. It's a technique I love to use. First you cover some throw away fabric with shreds of fabrics to create the background. Then you build up the mid- and foregrounds with fussy cut bits. The various layers are held down with tulle and made to behave by stitching wildly all over the place. The final details are then added. Lastly a new backing is put on (you wouldn't believe the mess that the original backing becomes) and the whole quilted to make it look nice.

Time to Move On

2000

12 x 16 inches

In 1987, my marine biologist husband Bob moved his field operations from Panama to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. We bought a little house there. The summer following, our daughter Olivia was born there. This little quilt shows the view from our porch towards Buck Island National Monument.

Buck Island

2001

16 x 12 inches

More of Buck Island, this time at sunset. We used to have dinner on the verandah and give names to the marvelous thunder cloud formations.

Tropical Sunset

2001

18 x 14 inches

This little quilt was made for my oldest son, Toby's graduation from Cornell. There are t-shirts and bumper stickers which read "Ithaca is Gorges" and it is indeed. I wrestled with the problem of suggesting a waterfall and ended up crumpling tulle suggestively. I'm not entirely satisfied with the result but I have yet to go back and try again.

Ithaca Falls

2002

14 x 18 inches

My pal Kathy Rose and I were co-chairs this year (2009) of the Coastal Quilters Guild annual Challenge. The theme was The Art of Travel Posters and the only requirement (other than size) was that the quilt had to feature at least one word. The turn out was spectacular; to see other quilts, go to: http://www.coastalquilters.org/challenge/challenge09.html

This is a congratulatory present to Toby on passing his PhD qualifying exams in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley with a focus on the literature of Senegal. It was lots of fun poking around the Internet for inspiring photos; ironically, I ended up using one taken by Toby's girlfriend, Lauren.

Senegal

2009

18x24 inches