Recent Works

Delphinium – hand-pieced petals, machine appliquéd.  
Background hand dyed,-guided machine quilted.  
51 x 36″

This piece was inspired by the drought in California as well as other parts of the world. We are depleting our water resources to the point where we are drawing irrigation waters for lawns, pools, and agriculture from aquifers where it cannot be replenished. The pump in this piece is reaching to the aquifer. The tree’s roots are reaching and reaching way deep to survive. The river bed is nearly all dried up.

Hand painted, hand dyed and commercial fabrics.  Hand-guided machine quilting.

As I poured water into the reservoir of my self-watering flower pot . . . out popped this toad.  He made it clear that this was his home (but he didn’t mind my flooding it).  He remained for the summer.   He had the mien of a Prince.  Would I take the chance to kiss him?  Better to take his picture, translate his image to fabric, and commemorate my summer with My Prince.

Hand dyed and painted fabrics.
Machine Appliquéd, Hand-Guided Machine Quilted

First came the hurricane, which swamped the bedrock-built island beneath an irresistible surge from the sea.  Is that Island, and its sentinel Lady Liberty, now in jeopardy of recurring climatic onslaughts?  But while focus turned to defending against Nature, came the Surveillance, it too eroding that Liberty with all the force of a tidal surge.  That Lady who once beckoned the world’s “Tempest Tos’t to her “golden door,” founders . . .  not from cloudy skies from without, but by shadowy men from within.

Inspired by super storm Sandy in October  2012.  But also by our loss of privacy by the surveillance by Big Brother.  Notice Ms Liberty’s torch –  drowning in the sea on the lower left side of the quilt.

Hand dyed and commercial cotton. Machine pieced and appliquéd, hand beaded. Free motion machine quilted.

After watching The Dust Bowl (American Experience on PBS) and the news about the serious drought out west, I made this piece and donated it to the new SAQA traveling trunk show.

“Drought” was recently accepted into the permanent collection of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY.

Hand painted cotton fabric. Free motion machine quilted.

“Synthesis,” from the Greek words for “putting together”   – Φ synthesis depicts its primordial exemplar, the putting together of light and air in the presence of green  . . . . . contributions from Sun and Earth . . . synthesizing the food for life.

Hand dyed,painted and silk screened cottons. Machine appliquéd and free motion machine quilted.

This quilt was inspired by the Kuba Cloth.  

Kuba textiles are unique in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  They share the same rectangles, squares, and and triangles as in traditional quilting.

The center row are the threads of life.  The female figure is the symbol of fertility.  The circles symbolize a man and a woman and eventually a third smaller circle their child.