This year for my birthday, my mother bought me a plaque. It features a little girl sewing on a vintage sewing machine. The words surrounding the image say, “Once upon a time there was a girl who really loved sewing. It was me. The End.” And that sums it up. I LOVE to make things with my sewing machine.
Like many makers, I started young and never stopped. What I have discovered over the years, is that the maker’s path lacks clear-cut signage. Makers must make their own way. It has been a wild ride, and I have loved almost every minute of it.
When my husband and I moved to Valdez, Alaska in 2000 so he could work on one of the pipeline tug boats, I discovered the local quilt shop. After my first class, I stayed up all night quilting and thinking about what it would take to be a professional quilt maker. I wanted to make a living through the simple but carefully crafted movements of cut, stitch, press, and repeat.
Since then, I have had so many wonderful opportunities including studying with Nancy Crow, teaching in China, and helping communities across the United States express themselves in community quilts.
I am a quilt maker. Most of my work is based on traditional quilt blocks. I piece my canvases with my sewing machine. These compositions are modern day tapestries of color, pattern, repetition, and stitch.
Limiting the structure of my work to the pieced quilt has allowed me to go deep into color and print. Howdo I get color to vibrate? How do I get a self made print to read against another self made print? How can I stitch these elements together so that the viewer sees not only hundreds of scraps of fabric but also the SUM–the whole as greater than its parts? What would happen if a traditional bed quilt ate a healthy dose of psychedelic mushrooms? These are the questions I am trying to answer in my work.
As I explore the territory of patchwork, I am also thinking about its history and its future. I study to learn my past. I teach to share my knowledge with the future.
What makes me happiest is to create the most wacky colorful beautiful quilted compositions I can and then share them with the world.
