Five

Five
18" x 26"

This is a little quilt I made for a special art quilt exhibit honoring Yvonne Porcella:  “Quilting in the Garden” at Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore, CA, September 24-25, 2016, curated by Pokey Bolton.

I wanted to make a quilt that blends my voice with Yvonne’s to show respect for her inspiration and influence. Our kitten (aka, Mr. Innocent) is going fishing in room filled with references to Yvonne, including the number 5, which plays into the humor of the moment. I also wanted a special candle to show that even though she is not here, her light continues to shine bright!

I just recently learned that Yvonne started SAQA. I am in awe of the leadership and vision that Yvonne had for creating an organization that promotes quilts as art. I am a long time member of SAQA. And because of her vision and hard work, I am happy to have my art quilts hanging in almost 30 different venues in a total of 8 different exhibits. That never would have happened without her.

I also had the honor of having my work hang with Yvonne’s in a number of exhibits including the Dinner@Eight exhibits in Houston, Long Beach, and Chicago. I am so sad that I missed meeting her in person. She was truly a gift to our quilting community and she will be missed.

I thought it would also be interesting to show you one of my very early quilts, back when I used exclusively patchwork to build a quilt top and hand quilting to quilt it.

Mikey Likes It

one of the many fun fabrics used for the center, and close up of the hand quilting

hand quilting in the border, this was the duck pond close to our house

And, I didn't buy enough of my favorite theme fabric (a bright yellow fabric with vehicles on it) to use on the back, so I decided to piece together something fun and that's when I decided it would be interesting to use Yvonne's colorblock style and checkerboard style on the back.

Here's a close up:

I fussy cut out all these vehicles from the fabric mentioned before, and fused them on.  I used invisible thread to zig-zag around the edges.  I like the composition a lot. And it is super soft from years of use. There are a few places where the quilting thread has broken, and the binding is starting to fail, but those are things that can still be repaired.  It is sentimental to see this quilt again because my son is all grown up.  How did that happen so fast?