Quilt Gallery
This page has photos of some of my quilts.. keep checking, more to come!
Art Quilts
Some quilts have to be made. This was the third quilt I made, inspired by observing monarch butterflies pupate, then later emerge, expand their wings by 300%, and take their first flight.
Monarch Quilt
Hand-pieced monarch applique, 3D butterfly weed flower and leaf applique, with pieced background blocks
The Millennium Falcon quilts
(I made two) were designed for my great-nephews, who love Star Wars. I used the DK Star Wars Blueprints as inspiration for my design. This is my most recent ‘Art Quilt’
Monaco Quilt
This quilt was inspired by my favorite Art Deco post card, purchased in Monaco… a trip to the south of France for my husband’s 40th birthday. He loves Grand Prix auto racing… and so I designed this quilt for him. I talk about some of the design problems on my Monaco Quilt page. My goal was to do little if any raw edge appliqué, and there was a lot of detail that needed to be interpreted. Fabric selection was very important, but so were simplification choices, and finally quilting decisions.
The post card was purchased in 1993, in the early days of my quilting. I collected fabrics over the year, and eventually found fabrics I loved for the main car and started working on that as an appliqué. Then in 2021, I needed a major quilting project as a family health issue had me lethargic. It was finally time to just do it. I solved the final design problems/decisions one at a time, which included interpreting building detail through simple tone on tone appliqués and quilting detail, and simplified the text – choosing choosing to interpret the spirit and not the exact details of the original poster resulting in a quilt that was pleasing to both me and my husband.
I did some mini projects along the way, then actually took a break to do my first Moon Dance quilt and used that as an opportunity to learn some ruler quilting techniques before doing the final quilting. In the end, I didn’t do a lot of ruler quilting, using a walking foot for most of my work. I am most proud of my idea to simulate a firework effect in the quilting of the sky, using some zig-zag stitching (tuned from wide at the base to a point at the end).
Other art quilts
My other ‘Art Quilts’ include a silk panel painting of my dogs at the lotus pond, a pieced applique of the first-ever hawksbill turtle I saw (and photographed) while snorkeling–it made me think of an impressionist painting by Van Gogh, an underwater hockey banner for Team USA (that was taken to the world championships in Great Britain in 2006), as well as a detailed swim banner quilt made for my nephew while he was swimming for Auburn Univeristy.
Moon Dance QUILTS
If you’ve never made a quilt using curved seam blocks, you are missing out! There are several techniques you need to master, but the most critical is fabric selection. These quilts work best with a scrappy look, but even a stash of 20 fat quarters will go a long way. There are some wonderful acrylic templates out there, but you can even make your own with quilting template plastic. Although they’re a little harder to use with a rotary cutter, I’ve made complete quilts using my own templates… I even went a step further to design my own templates to create “rounder moons”.
Panel Quilts
Panel quilts are another favorite. I love being able to incorporate gorgeous artwork into innovative quilt designs that still allow you to piece together the artwork from the panel. I’ve made several couch quilts and a few bed quilts (including dog bed quilts) using these techniques I adapted from jelly roll quilts and other quilt patters, like Whisper.
Miscellaneous Quilts
You have to learn your craft somewhere… and every quilt is a learning opportunity. From a Jelly Roll challenge, I came up with the idea for a more designed bed spread, and later my idea for what I call “Prism Panel Quilts” … You learn what techniques you love, and those that don’t quite resonate with you. Sometimes you also learn lessons about choosing fabrics for a pattern! I also love whole cloth rayon quilts to snuggle with… so soft!
Dragonfly Quilts
Sometimes the detail is in the stitching… check out the borders and block details from this chest top sized quilt. I LOVE fonts… so I picked some of my favorites and embroidered words like dragonfly, water lily, and lotus in the borders. Inside the blocks I did my own quilted designs of dragonflies and water lilies. I took inspiration from the prints for where to place the flower designs. The stitching is more apparent on the back side.
In the Queen-sized bed quilt (right), Zentangle designs inspired me to do a combination of appliqué dragonflies and Celtic woven reeds with wing detail stitching. The border appliqués and quilting were hand-stitched. The interior fabric, a Hoffman design, was quilted on a long arm with a traditional fan pattern. It took a long time to figure out how I wanted to finish this quilt!
