Ahi o' Pele (Flames of Pele)
Ahi o' Pele (Flames of Pele) is my very first Hawaiian quilt. My sister and I were sitting on the black sand beach talking about my dream and I told her, "I want to live in a house by the sea. I want to quilt in the mornings, and have friends come by in the afternoons to eat and talk story." And then she said, "That is a wonderful dream. What can you do to get there?" I said, "Well, I suppose I could make a quilt." Ahi o' Pele is the result. This is a scan of a photograph, which is all I have as an image of this quilt and I apologize for the quality. I made it in 1993 while we were living in a building of no value (that's what it said on the deed) on the Big Island and we had a camera--that's it, a camera. It was purchased by the State of Hawaii for it's Art in Public Places program and I was blown away by the fact that a piece of my work would be left in Hawaii after I was gone. The background is black cotton and the foreground is cut from one piece of red fabric, like the snowflakes we used to cut out of paper in grade school. The stitiching is done in red thread and echoes around the image. I wanted to have a visual symbol of the red lava glowing in the cracks between the folds of the pahoehoe lava.
Lau Puka Puka (Leaf With Holes)
Imagine my surprise when Lau Puka Puka (Leaf With Holes) was purchased by the State of Hawaii for the same Art in Public Places program and was hung outside the governor's office in Honolulu! I have a better image of this one since we had upgraded to slides.
This quilt is 7 feet square and the leaves are about two feet across, which is exactly the same size as the leaves are in nature. In fact my son Blake and I went for a walk and picked a few leaves to use as patterns when I designed this quilt. It is a winter quilt, and the tiny green specks of the echo quilting stitches suggest the winter rains falling on the vibrant green of the wet leaves and the shiny black of the lava rock. I worked on this quilt while I was watching Blake's soccer games and the other children would come and sit underneath it. I forbid wiggling while I was working, so periodically they would get out from under it and jump around for a big to get their wiggles out. As you can imagine by the time the quilt was done it had peanut butter, shave ice, chocolate, mud and heaven only knows what all over it. I tossed it in the washer and the dryer at the laundromat and sent it off to the League of Hawaii Craftsmen juried show and then it went off to Honolulu to be mounted behind glass. I like the fact that wiggly Hawaiian children, mine and others, got to play around it and under it and put their energy into it before it became a valuable artifact.
This quilt is 7 feet square and the leaves are about two feet across, which is exactly the same size as the leaves are in nature. In fact my son Blake and I went for a walk and picked a few leaves to use as patterns when I designed this quilt. It is a winter quilt, and the tiny green specks of the echo quilting stitches suggest the winter rains falling on the vibrant green of the wet leaves and the shiny black of the lava rock. I worked on this quilt while I was watching Blake's soccer games and the other children would come and sit underneath it. I forbid wiggling while I was working, so periodically they would get out from under it and jump around for a big to get their wiggles out. As you can imagine by the time the quilt was done it had peanut butter, shave ice, chocolate, mud and heaven only knows what all over it. I tossed it in the washer and the dryer at the laundromat and sent it off to the League of Hawaii Craftsmen juried show and then it went off to Honolulu to be mounted behind glass. I like the fact that wiggly Hawaiian children, mine and others, got to play around it and under it and put their energy into it before it became a valuable artifact.
Li'i Li'i Ahi Pua o' Lehua (Little Flame Flower of Ohia)
Li'i Li'i Ahi Pua o' Lehua (Little Flame Flower of Ohia) is another winter quilt and was my third Hawaiian piece. It, too, is 7 feet square and I used the green stitching as I had in Lau Puka Puka to suggest the winter rains. The Ohia trees have little paintbrush flowers that glow bright red against the olive green of the leaves and the greyish black of the Ohia trunks. This quilt was the last time that I used commercially dyed fabrics for my work. After this I switched over to hand dyes. This quilt is also the point at which the Hawaiian women in Hui Kapa Apana o' Hilo (The Quilt Group of Hilo) gave up on getting me to do Hawaiian quilting properly. They kept telling me, with great patience, that black was a Kapu (taboo) color and that Hawaiian quilts did not use black. They calmly explained, over and over, that Hawaiian quilts had white or cream backgrounds with a solid main color. You could tell, after three quilts, that they were getting a little put off by my seeming inability to understand. My workmanship was very good, tiny even stitches, nice smooth curves to the applique, but what was with the black? I reluctantly told them that my house was primitive, my plumbing outdoors, my washing machine a washtub and scrub board, and my house was filled with muddy footed children and dogs. It would have made me extremely unpleasant to live with if I had been working on a white background quilt and trying to keep it clean. The black background, aside from the beautiful way it popped the colors, also disguised the dirt while I was working on it. But it wasn't until I talked about the way that I was using the black to try to capture the black lava rock that they began to feel better about my work. The black lava rock is an intense velvety black with a bluish iridescence. In the winter rainy season the wet makes all the colors saturated, deepening the black, making the greens glow and the reds explode. This they could understand, if it was an aesthetic and symbolic choice that made it, in its own way, traditional to the spirit of the Hawaiian quilt. When I hung this quilt at the Wailoa Center in Hilo it got a warm response. And I found my friend Sharon Balai, herself a renowned quilt designer, standing in front of it. She pointed out the Celtic look of the central design and I informed her that my background was, in fact, Irish. She nodded her head in acknowledgement and said, "Oh, yes. You do Irish Hawaiian quilting."
Na Kina'i Ika'ika Eha -- Four Strong Stones
Four strong stones refers to the ovals quilted into the center diamond of this quilt. You can only see the central diamond when the quilt is back lit as it is in the picture. When the quilt is not backlit you just see the white ginger plants in the corners on a uniform peachy beige background -- no white center diamond, no white edges. This is one of my love/hate quilts. I love it, my nephew Christopher loved it, my brother Dan and his wife Linda who were given it love it. My quilt group, my husband Joe, my son Joshua -- well they never really said but I could tell they weren't enthusiastic. Some of the quilt group ladies were a little more frank. This is what I was trying for with this one.
When we cleared the land we found a dip, a kind of glade in the jungle that was surrounded by white ginger plants. It had obviously been cleared and used before because there were four stones set in a kind of conversational grouping in the center. When I returned to the home place one evening my son Blake and my husband greeted me, excited and sweaty and both holding machetes and took me down, with my eyes covered, to show me the little space that they had discovered. It was magical.
When we cleared the land we found a dip, a kind of glade in the jungle that was surrounded by white ginger plants. It had obviously been cleared and used before because there were four stones set in a kind of conversational grouping in the center. When I returned to the home place one evening my son Blake and my husband greeted me, excited and sweaty and both holding machetes and took me down, with my eyes covered, to show me the little space that they had discovered. It was magical.
I was trying to capture that feeling of finding something already old, already used and loved, that sense of having unearthed rather than simply created something. I dyed the muslin peachy brown color with ironwood bark in the tin washtub over a fire in the dooryard. My son Joshua had cut some ironwood poles for walking sticks and commented, when he peeled the bark off, that the red brown stain might make a good dye. And he was right. I cut the white ginger branches out of bleached muslin and, after appliqueing them down, made up the backing with pieces of the white and the dyed muslin. I tried to get it into the juried show for the League of Hawaii Craftsmen but the judges didn't love it like I did. I would have been hurt by that except for what happened when I came to collect the quilt.
I walked through the exhibition in Hilo, noticing the huge wooden drum that appeared to be carved from a single large Koa trunk. It was about three feet across and I was aware of the age of the tree and could almost hear the deep resonant echoes of the sounds that it could make. I looked up and saw a Hawaiian man standing in front of my quilt and I walked over and stood beside him. I told him I had made it and he looked surprised. "I thought it was an old style quilt," he said. That made me happy. I asked him if he had a piece in the show and he said he had made the drum. "I love that drum," I said. "I can feel that drum in my chest, but like it is coming from a long ways away, or a long time ago." We grinned at each other. I said, "All the pieces are good, but for me your's has Mana." He told me he hadn't really looked at anything else, he just walked in, saw the quilt and came right over to stand in front of it. In Hawaii they call that feeling of the hair raising on the back of your neck Chicken Skin. We stood there together, covered in Chicken Skin, and basked in a glow of mutual admiration.
I walked through the exhibition in Hilo, noticing the huge wooden drum that appeared to be carved from a single large Koa trunk. It was about three feet across and I was aware of the age of the tree and could almost hear the deep resonant echoes of the sounds that it could make. I looked up and saw a Hawaiian man standing in front of my quilt and I walked over and stood beside him. I told him I had made it and he looked surprised. "I thought it was an old style quilt," he said. That made me happy. I asked him if he had a piece in the show and he said he had made the drum. "I love that drum," I said. "I can feel that drum in my chest, but like it is coming from a long ways away, or a long time ago." We grinned at each other. I said, "All the pieces are good, but for me your's has Mana." He told me he hadn't really looked at anything else, he just walked in, saw the quilt and came right over to stand in front of it. In Hawaii they call that feeling of the hair raising on the back of your neck Chicken Skin. We stood there together, covered in Chicken Skin, and basked in a glow of mutual admiration.
Le'ia -- Abundance
Everything about this quilt was planned to evoke abundance. I was diagnosed with a rare and deadly cancer shortly before I designed this quilt and Le'ia was intended teach me how to manage this. My intention was not to cure the cancer, but rather to teach me how to live abundantly, as if time and happiness were available to me in an unlimited way. In Hawaii the 'Ulu or Breadfruit is a symbol of abundance so that is the plant element that I chose for Le'ia. If you have a breadfruit tree you have food for yourself, your family, your neighbors, for everyone. I dyed the fabrics for this quilt on my friend Judy's rolling lawn and the background fabric is meant to evoke the sky at sunrise, with the design of the 'Ulu tree meant to recreate the feeling of laying on the ground and looking up through the branches of the 'ulu to the sky above. Le'ia is a very traditional Hawaiian quilt, both in terms of the design which is the classic 8 fold from whole cloth laid out on a whole cloth background fabric, in terms of the quilting which is the traditional wave quilting that echoes the lines of the design, and in terms of the intention. In Hawaii warmth is not the primary motivation for quilts. While nights can be cool, especially at the higher elevations, it is the need to express beauty and meaning that really drives Hawaiian quilters. Hawaiian quilts have a story, and they are meant to convey that story. Le'ia, for me, was a teaching quilt and gradually, as I made what I estimate to be close to a million hand stitches in the making of this quilt, I taught myself to live in and treasure each moment. Le'ia became a meditation of healing for me and is now, 16 years later, hanging in the hallway of my house in Portland, Maine where it is still radiating it's healing Mana on my household and everyone who passes through my hallway every day.
Na Malama o' Ke'ola -- The Light of Life
This quilt is known informally among my friends and family as The Moon Quilt. The idea of this quilt had been percolating for a while but didn't really become clear to me until November 1997 when I had surgery for the cancer that I refer to in reference to Le'ia. I refused the major surgery that was recommended to me for reasons that were hard to explain in words, but which I think are palpable in the atmosphere of this quilt. The surgeon who received this quilt from me, whether he understood my motivation or not, agreed to design and work out a more modest surgical procedure that I could embrace.
The design really came together during the chemo and radiation that followed the surgery. We were living in our open air house on the Big Island and we did not have indoor plumbing. What we did have was a lovely, large bath house about 20 feet from the main building. Because of the effects of the treatment I had to make several trips a night out to this bath house, often running through the rain. And that trip from bed to bath house is the world of this quilt. The Hawaiian moon is large and brilliant, it seems closer and more personal than the moon in other places because of the trade wind swept clarity of the air. I would awaken quickly and leave my husband warmed bed to run though the moonlit night. I would use the shower hose to cleanse the wound of the surgery, first running the water onto the roof of the house until it was warm so as not to waste the catchment water. The droplets would shine in a bright sparkling arc in the light of the moon. And then I would return to my bed, enfolded and warmed by my husband. That time when I felt so loved and healed, by my husband, but also by the cool night air, the rain, the gentle winds and the soft pervasive moonlight is the world of this quilt.
The design really came together during the chemo and radiation that followed the surgery. We were living in our open air house on the Big Island and we did not have indoor plumbing. What we did have was a lovely, large bath house about 20 feet from the main building. Because of the effects of the treatment I had to make several trips a night out to this bath house, often running through the rain. And that trip from bed to bath house is the world of this quilt. The Hawaiian moon is large and brilliant, it seems closer and more personal than the moon in other places because of the trade wind swept clarity of the air. I would awaken quickly and leave my husband warmed bed to run though the moonlit night. I would use the shower hose to cleanse the wound of the surgery, first running the water onto the roof of the house until it was warm so as not to waste the catchment water. The droplets would shine in a bright sparkling arc in the light of the moon. And then I would return to my bed, enfolded and warmed by my husband. That time when I felt so loved and healed, by my husband, but also by the cool night air, the rain, the gentle winds and the soft pervasive moonlight is the world of this quilt.
Fertility
This is a full image shot of Fertility, which is an idea that I reworked from Lau Puka Puka, the Hawaiian quilt that is hanging in the Governor's office in Honolulu. Fertility was made after I left the islands and moved to hot, dry, brown, hot, dry, arid, did I say hot, dry Phoenix, Arizona. I was obviously longing for the green opulent growth of the Hawaiian rain forest. I wanted the leaves in this quilt to be powerful, sensual expressions of the relentless upswelling of living things in Hawaii. The growth on our property would lift rocks and split lava. When we moved onto the property there were three mounds of beautiful flowers. When we bulldozed the driveway over a year later we discovered that the mounds of flowers actually hid three abandoned cars which had been totally invisible under their mantle of leaves and blossoms.
This quilt is actually about 8 feet square which makes the big central leaves about a yard across and the central buds about the size of your hand. This is life size for the leaves and buds of this plant. Devan used to hide behind these kinds of leaves when she was 3 years old, and one leaf would totally disguise her. It is a sexy quilt that lives up to the name Fertility. The rumor in the family is that it should be slept under with discretion, since it can lead to the birth of twins.
This quilt is actually about 8 feet square which makes the big central leaves about a yard across and the central buds about the size of your hand. This is life size for the leaves and buds of this plant. Devan used to hide behind these kinds of leaves when she was 3 years old, and one leaf would totally disguise her. It is a sexy quilt that lives up to the name Fertility. The rumor in the family is that it should be slept under with discretion, since it can lead to the birth of twins.
Phoebe Dreaming in Color
Dreaming in Color was a commissioned work. It was my first attempt to use the Hawaiian Quilting techniques and aesthetic to talk about something universal and using plants and forms from New England, which is the land of origin for me and for the Phoebe of the title. Phoebe has been a dear friend since my son was a baby, so for about 30 years. At the time that I made this quilt for her we had known each other for less than half that time. I worked for her when I was living in Stanford California and we had an instant feeling of mutual recognition, a sense of "Oh, one of us!" that neither of us often experienced. We both grew up in country where the maple leaves turned to flame colors before finally succumbing to winter and falling onto the ground. We were both bookish, tree climbing, imaginative girls who would carry a book up a tree in order to avail ourselves of all the things we loved simultaneously. A Good Book, wind in our hair, the unique perspective that a tree-top point of view provides, the ability to see far both in terms of distance and perhaps even in terms of time.
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use New England plants for Phoebe's quilt, and that she wasn't a modest, quiet Violet or Rugosa Rose kind of personality. I needed something dramatic. I was planning a trip back to the mainland -- a sort of tour of America in a way with a stop in New York to visit a nephew, in Maine to see my family, in Minnesota to see my son Blake in his father's home. So I added in a stop in Ann Arbor to stay with Phoebe and see what we could come up with for a design that would be mutually meaningful. I thought of the maple leaves when I was in Maine. The colors appealed to me and the idea of a tree, with roots going deep into the ground and leaves reaching up into the air and sunlight seemed very evocative of Phoebe's history and personality.
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use New England plants for Phoebe's quilt, and that she wasn't a modest, quiet Violet or Rugosa Rose kind of personality. I needed something dramatic. I was planning a trip back to the mainland -- a sort of tour of America in a way with a stop in New York to visit a nephew, in Maine to see my family, in Minnesota to see my son Blake in his father's home. So I added in a stop in Ann Arbor to stay with Phoebe and see what we could come up with for a design that would be mutually meaningful. I thought of the maple leaves when I was in Maine. The colors appealed to me and the idea of a tree, with roots going deep into the ground and leaves reaching up into the air and sunlight seemed very evocative of Phoebe's history and personality.
Po'i Po'i Aloha: Love All Around
I made this quilt for my grandson Noah before he was born. It was made to be a welcome to the world quilt, and it is unusual to have a Hawaiian quilt with nothing in the center. When my ladies at the quilting group asked me about that I said, "You put the baby in the middle of the quilt -- that's what makes it complete." And that is when they helped me come up with the name Po'i Po'i Aloha. There is love all around the baby. I made it when Noah's mother had left the islands to live with her parents in Virginia, but while his father was still living with us, working with his Dad (my husband Joe) and saving up his money with the plan to join them so that he could be there when his baby son was born. He left in time to do that, and I finished the quilt in time for him to carry it with him. I told him, "Put your son in the center of this quilt to wrap my love around him. And when you can bring him back to the islands so I can see him." And, two years later, back the three of them came. It was in Hilo, Hawaii that his brother Stephen was born later that year. They lived with us off and on while they were in Hawaii and later, when his mother went back to the mainland, she took Noah's quilt with her and promised me that she would keep it for him. Because of the hand stitching that I put into Po'i Po'i Aloha, and the way I was thinking of them the whole time I was working on it, I find that I can almost sense the quilt. It is in Olathe, Kansas now but it is still close to Noah, and it is still heavily stitched with my thoughts about him and his family and my love for them all.
Frittilaire Imperiale or the Crown Flower Quilt
In the Spring of 2001 I had my first exclusive quilt show at Scott Potter's Gallery on High Street in Portland. This quilt was inspired by some of the gilded papers that he used in his exquisite decoupage work. This is the first quilt where I used silk as the background fabric, and also the first quilt where I used gilded thread for the quilting stitches. This subtle gleam of gold is not easy to capture in photographs but adds a sense of opulence and antiquity to the finished quilt. I wanted to create a piece that felt rich and ageless. The floral design is still based on the eight fold Hawaiian style, but I hand painted on the dyes in a way that I had first experimented with on Fertility. You can almost see the blue/purple shoulders on the red Crown Flowers where the green dyes overlapped with the orangey reds in the flowers themselves. The floral design is all cut from one piece of fabric and almost completely fills the 45" square for this wall quilt. This quilt is available for purchase on my Etsy site. This detail shot of the Crown Flowers gives you an idea of the density of the stitching and the shifting tones of the hand painted, hand dyed colors of the folded applique foreground layer. The background, which is an overdyed silk dupioni, is a bronzey gold color. I used a hand dyed crimson silk charmeuse for the back of the quilt and the photo above shows this piece lit from behind. When the light comes through the piece it changes the color of the background to a kind of stained glass rosey orange color. Either way is beautiful, but they are different. I have used this quilt lit from behind and hanging in a window, laying on a table as a center piece, folded across the back of a wingback or settee, and hanging on the wall. Frittllaire has appeared at the Scott Potter Gallery in Portland, Maine; and the Wailoa Gallery in Hilo, Hawaii, and was featured at the Merry Monarch Festival in Hilo.
Merrymeeting Spring or the Crocus Screens
This piece was designed for the Scott Potter Gallery Show in Portland Maine. I made it after I had left the Big Island and was living in Phoenix. I was thinking about Merrymeeting Bay in Topsham, Maine where I had lived in a house my father built before moving to Hawaii. I was thinking, actually, about Maine and about my father. I called him and asked him to build me this screen frame. Well, actually I talked him into it; it wasn't as simple as just asking. Like many of the men in my family, my father was a taciturn man. And this screen had to be made while I was in Arizona and he was living in the Merrymeeting house with all the design work being done verbally over the phone. But he agreed and we managed better, I think, than either one of us had expected. When I finished the pieces and took them to Maine to fit them to the screen they snapped into place perfectly -- as if we had been in the same room the whole time.
In designing the screens I thought about the magical time in Maine when winter is clinging but the crocus buds start to poke through the snow. These crocus flowers are hand painted with dyes onto cotton fabric, which is then cut and appliqued onto white silk. The stitching is done with a sparkling thread to suggest ice crystals. I had a strong feeling of connection to my father and to Merrymeeting Bay when I made this piece.
In designing the screens I thought about the magical time in Maine when winter is clinging but the crocus buds start to poke through the snow. These crocus flowers are hand painted with dyes onto cotton fabric, which is then cut and appliqued onto white silk. The stitching is done with a sparkling thread to suggest ice crystals. I had a strong feeling of connection to my father and to Merrymeeting Bay when I made this piece.
Bountiful Harvest -- A Marriage Quilt
I made this quilt as a wedding present for a much loved nephew and his bride. These two people met and fell in love when they were very young. What I particularly admired about them was the way in which they loved each other without constraints. He went to college in New England and New York. She pursued dance here in Portland and then Boston. They saw more of each other when they both went to London for graduate work. It was almost 10 years after they met that they married and I have never seen a wedding so happy and well deserved. It was both a fitting end to the mutual respect and commitment of their courtship and the wonderful beginning to their marriage.
Her symbol is the pomegranite -- beautiful and exotic, tart and sweet, reaching skyward. His is the squash fruit and blossom -- wholesome, grounded and sustaining. His design is around the outside of the quilt reaching inward....her's is in the center reaching outward and intertwined with his. Evidently both of these plants are fertility symbols which is something I did not know when I selected the images for the quilt. They have been married now for more than 10 years and a significant part of their Bountiful Harvest are the two beautiful children that they have created together. But I don't think the quilt can take all the credit for that.
Her symbol is the pomegranite -- beautiful and exotic, tart and sweet, reaching skyward. His is the squash fruit and blossom -- wholesome, grounded and sustaining. His design is around the outside of the quilt reaching inward....her's is in the center reaching outward and intertwined with his. Evidently both of these plants are fertility symbols which is something I did not know when I selected the images for the quilt. They have been married now for more than 10 years and a significant part of their Bountiful Harvest are the two beautiful children that they have created together. But I don't think the quilt can take all the credit for that.
Cotton -- A Quilt With a History
Cotton was not only made in Arizona but is also inspired by the history of Coolidge and Randolph, two small towns about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. We lived in Coolidge for three years when Devan was in Middle School. Coolidge is a small town that historically has made a living off of the Pima cotton which grows so well in the irrigated, sunny soil. The Casa Grande ruins are in this little town and consequently we can infer that agriculture has been a big deal in this area for about a thousand years.
Because the Arizona climate is so unGodly hot I used to run on the dirt roads beside the irrigation ditches early in the mornings before the sun got too high. When the pima cotton started to grow the fields were awash in green with delicate pink flowers. After the cotton was fully developed the farmers would cut off the irrigation and let the plants dry out because that makes them easier to pick the cotton bolls off. And during that time of the year the temperature in the region is well above 100 degrees and the air is dry, dusty and hot, hot, hot. On my morning runs I began to wonder about the people who had moved into the area, particularly in the 30's, in order to work in the fields. I went down to the local historical society to see if I could do a little research. Evidently in the 1920s Coolidge had a bumper cotton crop and the farmers were a little concerned that they wouldn't be able to get enough workers to get the cotton in and onto the railroad cars in time. One man knew of a small town in Mississippi that was made up of share croppers who were experienced in cotton agriculture and he went back there to see if he could get workers. A deal was worked out that relocated almost the entire small town to a four corner piece of land just outside of Coolidge. The town was named Randolph and had it's own Post Office, store, and a small one room schoolhouse who's teacher was paid out of the town of Coolidge's taxes. The town of Randolph was one of the first all black towns in the West. Coolidge got its cotton picked, kept its schools segregated, and actually passed a law that required all blacks to be out of Coolidge by sundown.
Because the Arizona climate is so unGodly hot I used to run on the dirt roads beside the irrigation ditches early in the mornings before the sun got too high. When the pima cotton started to grow the fields were awash in green with delicate pink flowers. After the cotton was fully developed the farmers would cut off the irrigation and let the plants dry out because that makes them easier to pick the cotton bolls off. And during that time of the year the temperature in the region is well above 100 degrees and the air is dry, dusty and hot, hot, hot. On my morning runs I began to wonder about the people who had moved into the area, particularly in the 30's, in order to work in the fields. I went down to the local historical society to see if I could do a little research. Evidently in the 1920s Coolidge had a bumper cotton crop and the farmers were a little concerned that they wouldn't be able to get enough workers to get the cotton in and onto the railroad cars in time. One man knew of a small town in Mississippi that was made up of share croppers who were experienced in cotton agriculture and he went back there to see if he could get workers. A deal was worked out that relocated almost the entire small town to a four corner piece of land just outside of Coolidge. The town was named Randolph and had it's own Post Office, store, and a small one room schoolhouse who's teacher was paid out of the town of Coolidge's taxes. The town of Randolph was one of the first all black towns in the West. Coolidge got its cotton picked, kept its schools segregated, and actually passed a law that required all blacks to be out of Coolidge by sundown.
By the time we lived there, of course, the schools were integrated and my daughter was going to classes with children from Mexico, the Navajo reservation and the African American children whose families used to live in Randolph. When I went into the schools to volunteer working with her classmates I was struck by the knowledge that 60 years ago those children would not only not be welcomed in Coolidge, but would have been out working in the fields in the inhuman heat of the harvest time.
At around this same time my friend Thelma Smith www.thelmasmith.com/blog/ asked if I would like to produce a quilt for her upcoming show at the Tubac Art Center called Wrapped in Cloth: The Human Figure in Textile Arts. And that is when the whole design of this quilt came together for me. The faces quilted into the background are inspired by historical photographs from the 1920s to the 1940s in Arizona. I intended the figures of the people to be "surprising" to the viewer and to be a strong part of the background of the quilt, the underpinnings and strength of the delicate tracery of the Pima cotton plant. My intention was to demonstrate that the strength and beauty of the cloth comes not only from the land, but from the people who worked the land. I wanted to demonstrate that beauty can only come from beauty, strength can only come from strength. Cotton is really a homage to the people who came west to find a new life for themselves and their children, and who poured themselves out in order to create that life.
For those who might be interested Cotton is available for purchase.
At around this same time my friend Thelma Smith www.thelmasmith.com/blog/ asked if I would like to produce a quilt for her upcoming show at the Tubac Art Center called Wrapped in Cloth: The Human Figure in Textile Arts. And that is when the whole design of this quilt came together for me. The faces quilted into the background are inspired by historical photographs from the 1920s to the 1940s in Arizona. I intended the figures of the people to be "surprising" to the viewer and to be a strong part of the background of the quilt, the underpinnings and strength of the delicate tracery of the Pima cotton plant. My intention was to demonstrate that the strength and beauty of the cloth comes not only from the land, but from the people who worked the land. I wanted to demonstrate that beauty can only come from beauty, strength can only come from strength. Cotton is really a homage to the people who came west to find a new life for themselves and their children, and who poured themselves out in order to create that life.
For those who might be interested Cotton is available for purchase.
La Bella Familia -- A Family's Quilt
La Bella Familia is finally finished and sent off. This piece took me longer to make than any other quilt I have ever done. And it wasn't because of technical difficulties or the fact that it is over 9 feet square. I have made other quilts as big or bigger in a quarter of the time (Conversation and Le'ia). It was a conceptual problem.
I have said before that the quilt knows what it wants to be, and I believe that La Bella Familia knew what it was supposed to be......it just took a lot of fits and starts for me to figure it out. It started out as a quilt for a little family made up of a single mother and her daughters, and ended up as a quilt for a big family made up of a mother and her daughters, a father and his sons, and the twins that belonged to everyone. And over the course of the four years that this transition took the concept of the quilt kept shifting, and then reshifting in order to encompass what was going on in their lives.
The idea of the sunflowers was based on the mother and her daughters. They are exuberant, intelligent, dynamic blondes and sunflowers were the only flower that could capture the energy that this group of females contain. The pillows that I usually work up prior to a quilt came in handy in this situation, since I had the sunflower image but no overall design for the quilt itself. So I worked out the technical aspects on the pillows....how to dye and stitch, what background colors to use, full faced sunflowers or sunflowers in side view. But the idea of the family of flowers behind and coming through a frame didn't come to me until I learned that the couple were expecting twins. Once I learned that the design, dyeing and basting out for the appique happened rapidly in a couple of weeks. I was so happy for them as I stitched on the quilt top through the fall and the early winter of that year as it seemed like the whole world waited for the birth of two lovely baby girls.
And then three months later I learned that one of the girls had quite suddenly died without any warning or apparent cause. The death of a baby is such a tragedy, so non-negotiable and so unacceptable that there is no way to get your mind around it. I brought the completed quilt top with me and went to where the family was to make myself available to them for whatever I could do. We looked at the quilt top during that time and the girls, their mother and their father showed me which of the flowers was the baby Bella who had died.
I returned home to begin the quilting phase, and used a clear light yellow to do the stitching for Bella's flower and the "energy lines" of wave quilting around her flower. I used a warm red brown thread for everything else. But the quilting phase took much longer than usual for me. I struggled to find time to work on it, whereas usually I have to be dragged off a quilt in order to cook, eat, wash and sleep. It wasn't until over a year later, when I attended Bella's memorial service, that I realized that I had been making a quilt for an individual, the mother of the family, when the quilt wanted to be for the family.....Bella's family. This family has become stronger and stronger in their love and their commitment to each other over the time that I have known them.
In Italian La Bella Familia translates as The Beautiful Family or The Good Family. And, of course, in our case it also means Bella's Family.
I have said before that the quilt knows what it wants to be, and I believe that La Bella Familia knew what it was supposed to be......it just took a lot of fits and starts for me to figure it out. It started out as a quilt for a little family made up of a single mother and her daughters, and ended up as a quilt for a big family made up of a mother and her daughters, a father and his sons, and the twins that belonged to everyone. And over the course of the four years that this transition took the concept of the quilt kept shifting, and then reshifting in order to encompass what was going on in their lives.
The idea of the sunflowers was based on the mother and her daughters. They are exuberant, intelligent, dynamic blondes and sunflowers were the only flower that could capture the energy that this group of females contain. The pillows that I usually work up prior to a quilt came in handy in this situation, since I had the sunflower image but no overall design for the quilt itself. So I worked out the technical aspects on the pillows....how to dye and stitch, what background colors to use, full faced sunflowers or sunflowers in side view. But the idea of the family of flowers behind and coming through a frame didn't come to me until I learned that the couple were expecting twins. Once I learned that the design, dyeing and basting out for the appique happened rapidly in a couple of weeks. I was so happy for them as I stitched on the quilt top through the fall and the early winter of that year as it seemed like the whole world waited for the birth of two lovely baby girls.
And then three months later I learned that one of the girls had quite suddenly died without any warning or apparent cause. The death of a baby is such a tragedy, so non-negotiable and so unacceptable that there is no way to get your mind around it. I brought the completed quilt top with me and went to where the family was to make myself available to them for whatever I could do. We looked at the quilt top during that time and the girls, their mother and their father showed me which of the flowers was the baby Bella who had died.
I returned home to begin the quilting phase, and used a clear light yellow to do the stitching for Bella's flower and the "energy lines" of wave quilting around her flower. I used a warm red brown thread for everything else. But the quilting phase took much longer than usual for me. I struggled to find time to work on it, whereas usually I have to be dragged off a quilt in order to cook, eat, wash and sleep. It wasn't until over a year later, when I attended Bella's memorial service, that I realized that I had been making a quilt for an individual, the mother of the family, when the quilt wanted to be for the family.....Bella's family. This family has become stronger and stronger in their love and their commitment to each other over the time that I have known them.
In Italian La Bella Familia translates as The Beautiful Family or The Good Family. And, of course, in our case it also means Bella's Family.
