Quilt Gallery

Machine pieced, machine quilted. I’ve always loved mathematical art. In fact my favorite jigsaw puzzle as a child was of a painting by Tadasky. On a trip through New York I saw a flier for an op art exhibit at the state museum with that Tadasky painting on the cover. The exhibit renewed my love of op art and inspired this quilt. It is an original design based on a painting by Yvaral. The original painting produces scintillations at the intersections of the lines. Mine produces darker spots at those instead, making people ask if I dyed darker fabrics for those intersections.

Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, fused, machine quilted, hand embroidered and embellished. This is an original design for the challenge for Salt Creek’s 2006 show where it received a ribbon. I had been thinking about doing a mixed technique round quilt based on Imari porcelain for quite a while. When we were given the beautiful blue fabrics for the challenge it was obviously time! The Uchima family crest (butterfly) appears in the design as does the kanji for twenty-five to celebrate my guild’s anniversary. Techniques include paper piecing, blue work, thread painting, broderie perse, Sashiko, silk painting, shadow trapunto, hand-dyeing, and reverse appliqué.

Hand appliquéd, machine pieced, machine quilted, hand embellished. I’ve always loved origami and when my husband’s family was planning a reunion in Hawai’i, I came up with the idea for this quilt. I managed to find some small-scale Hawaiian prints in Honolulu that I thought would make great tiny shirts. When I got home and went to the store to get background fabric there was, surprisingly, a pattern for a folded Aloha shirt quilt from Beyond the Reef publishers. I had my own layout in mind already, which I preferred to theirs, and made miniature leis to coordinate. I made similar quilts for my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and single shirt versions for our Hawaiian “aunties”. This piece won second place in it’s category at the 2006 Crazy Quilters show in Wisconsin.

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Machine pieced, machine appliquéd, heavily machine quilted (hence the name), hand beaded and embellished. This was our guild block of the month for 2002-2003, designed by Roz DeBoer and Laura Bushnell. It amazes me how I went from terror at the thought of other-than-straight-line machine quilting to this in the space of a year! Quilting and embellishment took about six months. I become obsessed with fish beads and still have to stop myself from buying them. This quilt won an award in the 2006 SCQG show and took first place in it’s category at the 2006 Crazy Quilters Show in Wisconsin.

Machine pieced, machine quilted, hand beaded and embellished. I love Eileen Sullivan’s designs… and she’s named Eileen! Crocuses are one of my favorite flowers. This way I get to keep some around after the bunnies come and eat the genuine articles. I always enjoy working in purple and green, but this time there is yellow thrown in to liven it up. I decided to add beaded dewdrops and stamens, then made some machine lace dragonflies, found some insect beads, and added the spider web for balance. Then, of course, I had to find a spider. Thanks to my friend, Gwyneth Johnson, for finding the silver spider.

Machine pieced, machine quilted. On St. Patrick’s Day I decided to start a new quilt. I pulled a random book off the shelf (M’liss Rae Hawley’s “Fat Quarter Quilts”) and opened it to a random page. When the quilt pictured was called “Road to Ireland”, I took that as a sign from the Quilt Gods. I challenged myself to use stash and only had to purchase the gold fabric. The blocks went together that day, but I was unhappy with the finished layout. I decided that it could be used to showcase a small medallion and thought that this would be a good time to try making a fused Celtic knot. I echoed the knot shape in metallic thread in the other blocks using tissue paper to transfer the design.

Machine pieced, machine appliquéd, machine quilted, embellished. I designed this piece as a Block of the Month for my guild, the Salt Creek Quilter’s Guild. Some squares are entirely original, while some are loosely based on patterns found elsewhere. I designed the blocks, drafted foundations, and wrote directions, and, along with my friend, Betsy Maloney, constructed fifty-eight kits every month…much thanks due to our committee members!

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Machine pieced, machine quilted. My guild offered a class in curved piecing with quilter and author Debbie Bowles. The class was fabulous and completely destroyed any fear that I had of sewing curves. My fabrics, however, did not look right to me in Debbie’s layout, so a “re-design” was in order. The fabrics are all Asian in style, but a friend said that something about it made her think of Frank Lloyd Wright, hence the name!

Machine pieced, machine quilted. Every now and then someone in my bee brings a project that we all want to do. My friend, Kim Wright, brought this one. It is my layout of a technique by Margaret Miller in my favorite color scheme – purple and green. It took a long time to finish because, at that point in time, I was still afraid to quilt any way other than in the ditch. I bite the bullet and quilted concentric arcs in purple metallic thread. Thank the quilt gods for Mettalica needles!