Quilt Gallery

This gallery selection is a glimpse of over 250 quilts, artworks, exploratory works, and other projects that I have created in the past four decades. You will see traditional quilts, naturescapes, and experimental work. I rarely photographed my work during my early, most prolific years. Hence I have large photographic gaps.  

Thank you for viewing my work…….I hope you enjoyed this glimpse.

Pizzazz
2003  60″ x 60″

Pizzazz is my impression of the colorations within a glorious winter sunset. I love working with colors that have spirit and interact well with each other. This quilt was really fun to create.
(There is a commercial pattern for this quilt.)

 

 

 

Northern Lights
2005  70″ x 70″

Northern Lights is a take-off on the traditional block design Rail Fence. I wanted to create luster and work with colors in a fairly sequential manner in this quilt. This quilt presented me with an additional couple of benefits, as it’s clear that dimensionality and shadows did not want to be left out of the mix―even if they weren’t formally invited. It’s always fun to let a design evolve. The blend of planned and unplanned usually make a stronger statement. (A commercial pattern is available for this quilt.)

 

 

Sunflower Garden
2003  42″ x 56″

I love playing with blocks in non-traditional ways. In Sunflower Garden I created whimsical sunflowers from different traditional five-patch blocks. It was quite fun to play with the fabrics to create this playful garden. (A commercial pattern is available for this quilt.)

 

   

                                                              

Catch A Falling Star on A Hot August Night
1989  60” x 75”

This is an experimental design using the technique of vertical strip-piecing. My goal was to create an impressionistic image of a luminous sunset with falling stars lighting up the sky, as they so often do during the month of August. As a youngster, I used to lie in my sleeping bag at night on the beach in August, falling asleep to the trails of falling stars. This quilt was made as a memory of those special nights amongst the stars, water, sand, trees, and forest animals that watched over us.

 

Iris Beckoning
1996  41″ x 60″

This impressionistic design features my favorite iris from my garden.  Once this quilt was created, the iris quietly disappeared. I used my curved piecing technique for this design―no appliqué was used.

 

 

 

 

 

Springtime in the Valley
1986  5 panels 13′ wide x 54″ high

Each day Mount Rainier is out, it reminds me of an ice cream cone in the sky. I love this mountain no matter the day or season. I felt the need to create this artwork, so that my creative soul could celebrate in some small way the beauty of this region in springtime. With Mt. Rainier as the backdrop at dawn, the bulbs fields in the Puyallup Valley are adding the delicate spring colors to the region.

 

 

Dreaming of a Room of My Own
1991  80″ x 94″

After spending over a decade creating commissioned fabric art for private residences and corporations, I decided although I loved the challenges, it was time to take a breather. It was then I made a quilt just for myself. I combined my favorite techniques for this quilt―horizontal and vertical strip-piecing, hand appliqué, and traditional piecing. I created a scene that is reminiscent of what I see each day that I am home. Dreaming of a Room of My Own is a visual statement from my creative soul. I always feel as if I am home when I see this quilt. It gives me an overall feeling of contentment and joy.

 

 

Setting Sun
1980  36″ x 48″

I love watching the sun set over the mountains.  Setting Sun was one of my early landscape quilts using strip-piecing as the technique to create
the scene.

The combination of calico and solid-color fabrics indicates the era (late 70s/early 80s). When this fabric art was hung in national shows in the early 80s, it seemed to begin an awakening in quilters that nature could be translated in fabric in much more exciting and fascinating ways than the fairly primitive or whimsical styles of that era. Through my humble beginnings of wanting to portray the beauty of my region and of my working through the hidden features related to landscapes, a new genre of landscape quilts was born.

Today the naturescapes are so eloquent and amazing in their beauty and intricacies. Everyone has come such a long way since those early days of landscape exploration. This fabric art is a good measure of how much the quilt world has evolved in thirty + years. I am eager to begin a few new-age naturescape quilts of my own in the near future. Setting Sun was hand quilted. The color of the  thread matched the color of the fabric being quilted.

 

 

Let Freedom Glow
1985 72″ x 72″

Let Freedom Glow Forever was created as a tribute to the Lady and what she stands for. This quilt was intended to be entered in the Statue of Liberty Quilt Contest and Exhibition in New York City in 1986, but it was sold to a corporation with offices in NYC before the event occurred.

Let Freedom Glow is made totally from narrow strips of fabric. I used more than 50 different black fabrics to create the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty. They ranged from cottons, silks, velvets, corduroys, to wools. The Statue of Liberty was created entirely through strip piecing. It was strip-pieced into the background design. No appliqué was used. This quilt was hand quilted.

 

 

Evening Tranquility
1984  60″ x 38″

Evening Tranquility is an imaginary composite of the scenery found in the Puget Sound region of the state of Washington with its hills, mountains, waterways, and beautiful skies.

Everyone seems to know exactly where this scene is located, yet each person’s selected location always differs from everyone else’s suggested location.

 

 

Dancing Twilight
1984 25″ x 36″

Dancing Twilight was made as a design exercise with value. I used leftover fashion fabrics, such as silks, velvets, satins, and rayons to create this value-play exercise.

 

 

 

Fortissimo in Plum
1985  36″ x 60″

I made Fortissimo in Plum for a friend who was studying interior design. She had to design a room that was based around a dramatic work of art for her final interior design project.

I never liked drama, so this was a difficult piece for me to do. Although I felt uncomfortable with this design and found many parts that I wish I would have changed. The design was created through both strip piecing and curved piecing. There is both luminosity and transparency in this design.

 

 

Country Evening
1985  Diptych 44″ x 33″

Country Evening was purely a playing-with- color- and- value- design project. I wanted to create an ambiguous scene―one that visually could be read as fields of grass under an evening sky. I made it into a diptych for no apparent reason except that I had the urge to do so. I like the simplicity of this piece. It calls to me.

 

 

Tripping Around the World in a Splash of Color
1991  96″ x 86″

This Trip around the World variation quilt incorporates luminosity, luster, opalescence, and iridescence within its design.

Made for my daughter Danielle, this postage-stamp–style quilt is made with 8,256  1-inch squares (I didn’t count―someone else did!). Sadly, it was stolen in Florida during a teaching engagement―prior to getting it photographed in a finished state and prior to giving it to my daughter.