The Circle of Life, a new art quilt

Recently my grandmother, Millie passed away. She and my mother were the ones who took the time when I was very young to teach me how to sew. And then when I was in junior high she taught me how to knit. She also instilled in me the idea that you can do anything you desire to do with enough hard work. I truly believe I am the artist I am thanks to my grandmother and mom who encouraged the creative part of me as a young child and gave me a good foundation of skills to start with. I'm thankful they taught me how to use a sewing machine, how to read a sewing pattern, and how to adjust patterns to fit my size. They set me up so that eventually when I started doing things on my own I had this great set of mental skills to be able to create things often times without a pattern, just from an idea.

I was sad when I was unable to attend my grandma's funeral due to my health and the kids being in school. My grandparents live in Arizona, about a 7 hour drive from my home. I needed to in some way of my own deal with her passing and feel that I some how honored her memory and the part of my life that she helped create. So when my mom mentioned bringing my grandmother's things home with them I asked if I could have some of her clothing to make something out of it. I wasn't sure at the time what it would be, but eventually decided an art quilt would really be fitting as years ago my grandmother was a fabulous quilter and I would have never become a fiber artist without her. I was and still am sad that she never got to see my quilts hanging in a gallery. But I like to think that now that she's up in heaven she knows how much she influenced me and how thankful I am for her.

(If you click on any of the photos they will enlarge so you can see them better. )


I started out with a few different blouses and cut them up into large sections, cutting out the seams, getting every thing to flat pieces of fabric. Then I decided to just make random sections to later be pieced together. I sewed the little sections together like a pillow cover, then stuffed them with fiber fill rather then using batting, because it was what I had in the house. I then sewed them closed.



Normally in quilting you sew all the squares or sections together, then put down batting, and a backing fabric, then quilt it all together. Well I did this art quilt a bit differently in that I sewed the sections and stuffed them with batting, then did the quilting on them before pinning all the sections together.



I then sewed all the little sections together with DMC Floss, so the stitching would stand out a bit more.



After it was all sewn together I added a bit of color using ink pencils and permanent markers. After coloring on the fabric with permanent marker I put rubbing alcohol on it and the colors spread out and give it that nice bleeding effect.


Once the "dyeing" was finished I added black and white buttons. And got a stick off a tree from our yard and painted it white to use as a hanger.

My thoughts when I was working on the quilt was that my grandmother really loved pink and blue, so all of the quilting is done with pink and blue floss. I did the repeated circles, because life really is circular and also to me circles always make me think of a family unit. And the different sections represent that life is also lived in stages. The buttons also make me think of family and mending clothes for them.



I am really happy with how the quilt came out. I've hung it up in my studio space to remind me of all the good times I had with my grandmother. One of the other great things about doing this was it renewed my desire to sew again. I had taken years off from it due to it causing so much pain in my hands. It still isn't easy and does cause pain, but by working in small sections I can hand quilt rather then trying to push a big quilt through my machine, which was a real problem for me. This small quilt was all the fun of creating without the tears and frustration.



This quilt is so much different then what I use to make, but it feels good to explore doing more abstract quilts that are more about the stitching and embellishment then composition. I'm going to clean out my fabric closet finally and get rid of some of the stuff I will no longer use so I can actually find the fabric I would really like to try to work with. I also have some procion dyes I have never used, so eventually I think it might be fun to try some dyeing.