Recent work

This small quilt started as just a quick excercise painting animal fur with the inks. I decided to tuck this fox behind a brick wall - and a series is started. It is now the 1st in a series of wildlife in contact with man.

My sisters and I are swapping blocks this year. The rules are we each make 4 identicle blocks, keep one and send one to each sister. For our 3rd swap we also exchanged fat quarters. So my block design is to make 4 sisters - and of course they needed feet and shoes. Legs and feet are made from rolled tshirt material and the shoes are a product called Vetrap - intended to be used on horse's legs and tails. It comes in the most beautiful colors - this jade green works perfect! What a HOOT!

This scene of a goldfinch landing on a purple iris I saw outside of my bedroom window - with no camera at hand. So I reproduced it in a quilt - painted with Tsuniko inks - then heavily quilted.

Scaling the 9Patch. This is a small quilt 11x14 made to portray the help experienced quilters give the beginner. There is a treacherous roller-coaster path one can follow - or just grab the rope and help offered by a quilter already near the top.

This twin sized quilt uses a fabric that fascinated me - solid color honeydew. I have truly begun to believe that it complements - goez with - all fabrics! This quilt started with just grey and the honeydew surrounding many colored squares. It was falling flat! So I added turquoise to it....and it came alive again.

Paintings - Portraits

I had the opportunity to do many commissioned paintings in 2006 and 2007. The boy with his dog is a watercolor - one of my first.








Many clients in West Virginia asked for paintings on river rocks - I used acrylics then would add a spray sealer. The 3d of the rocks added another design element to the painting - fascinating sometimes, disappointing at times, too. This painting of a very lovely older lady worked really well - with the contrast of how classy she is painted on a river rock.

These 2 are also acrylic on river rocks. My one limit was that I had to be able to lift the rock. The beach scene was almost too heavy to carry.

The 2 babies were combined from 2 photos, one baby picture of the father added to the baby picture of his son.

Webblog Created!

We moved from West Virginia to Tennessee in December 2007 - leaving a wonderful and supportive quilt guild. Haven't found a new quilt guild here yet - and have missed sharing work and receiving feedback. This blog is now my way to share.

This quilt is made using Ricky Tim's convergence technique - then adding reverse applique of the painted puppy - a schnoodle! I like painting on fabric with the Tsuniko inks - so easy to use, like painting watercolors and add no weight to the fabric at all - just wonderful. The grey I made by using 2 pigments. And that is their only fault - most of their inks are already blended pigments, so if you combine them further, you get mud! But the ultramarine is a single pigment ink.

The local newspaper in West Virginia ran several articles about how proud the govenor was to be supplying electrical power to the Washington/Baltimore area. To get power there, they were constructing several high voltage lines to cross the state. This quilt is called Cacapon Tears - it is the view from our house with the proposed high voltage lines added. So sad. I hope and pray they have kept them away from schools - the Department of Health even acknowledges a link between exposure to high voltage lines and childhood leukemia.

In 2007 I made this quilt to test a theory that value matters most. I used many fabrics from my stash, sorted them into only 2 values, stacked them, whacked them and sewed them. The name of this quilt...."Color Wins". I thought it had a very good chance of winning the Ugliest Quilt for 2007 award! To make it fun, I punched holes in it, added petals and Boyd's bears.