My work is meant to be handled and used. To that end, I do not make wall hangings or “art” pictures. My shawls belong on shoulders and my quilts belong on beds. I completed or pieced seven quilts in 2020. The five quilts below are all sewn from hand-dyed cotton batik fabrics, usually 60-100 different fabrics in each, shading dark to light and one hue into another. The photos are the best I can manage in such tiny form.

The quilts are machine pieced by me to original, one-of-a-kind patterns, and then machine quilted by Linda Pinkstaff at Astoria Quilting. In a final step, they are trimmed and the edges bond by me. Each one is about 82-89″ square. The first photo shows the quilt spread on a queen-sized bed. The second image of each shows the a close-up of the backing turned back over the front. The exception is the unfinished “Winterberry” which shows a corner of the front turned back over the backing because I am fond of that little nine-patch in one corner of the border.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

If you click on one of the images above, it should open up larger. For further information about these quilts, please contact me.

I am proud that my work contributes beautiful things for the home, using women’s materials and traditional textile skills to make something unique and beautiful.

My work celebrates color and comfort and the skills that have served human beings throughout our time on earth. This covid year where we have all been so held apart, fabric’s tactile appeal comforts me as an artist and as a human starved for contact. Each unique quilt and weaving incorporates the work of women dyers and spinners before reaching my studio. It is a sort of collaboration, each of us creating and passing along the fruit of our skills. My work is intended to be touched and used daily as handwork in a time of mass-production, communal in a culture overly focused on the individual, and women’s work in an atmosphere that marginalizes women’s cultural contributions.

After earning two studio degrees in the visual arts and later a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction, I taught in private and public schools and college for over 40 years. In retirement, I find I cannot stop. After exhibiting ceramics and metalsmithing in galleries such as Henry Gallery in Seattle and the Tacoma and Bellevue Art Museums, I shifted direction to focus on weaving and quilting after our sons were born. As a widely published writer, perhaps it is not surprising that my textiles are in the collections of many authors such as inventor and memoirist Temple Grandin, novelists Molly Gloss and Thea Swanson, and poet and memoirist Judith Barrington. 

Tomorrow I will see about putting up a post about the wool shawls.

•