Reflections

"Reflections" - 26"x26" - 2002

This piece had its beginning in the workshop, Twisted Ribbons, conducted by Ricky Tims in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The objective was to learn curved piecing. I decided to choose my fabrics by value rather than hue to get the effect of a dimensional ribbon twisting through space. Those values were selected from pure hues to go on a muted background. I learned Ricky's technique, but the result was the ugliest, most garish thing I had ever made.

I cannot throw anything away ... there had to be a way to "recycle" this piece. I had also taken Ricky Tim's "Harmonic Convergence" class the same week, so decided to use aspects of that technique to salvage this piece. The ribbon piece's background was a fat quarter of batik fabric. I had another fat quarter of a similar batik. I cut the ribbon piece into 1" strips and inserted 1" strips of the new batik. That helped, but it still looked awful, so I cut and stripped in more fabric from the other direction. That was better. Now, I don't recall if I cut and stripped in additional fabric one OR two more times. I mixed up the order of the ribbon strips in the process. I stopped cutting and sewing when I saw what looked like reflections of lights in river water to me. I needed something to cast those reflections. A dive into my stash came up with 2" squares of silk fabric samples.

The gold metallic threads around the silk squares float away from the surface. Tails were left at the beginning and end of the zig-zag stitch seams on each side. Yarn couched in a wave pattern is the quilting in the center panel.

Since this obviously was "night" I needed a dark frame. The velvet border fabric that was discharged (bleached) and painted by Jan Lewis of Evanston, Illinois was perfect. She had given me the piece in exchange for working out of my fabric stash at workshops we both attended at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

This piece is one of the few out of the 244+ quilts I've made over the last 12 years that I've kept to hang in our living room. Its hanging space gets a rotation of a selected small group of quilts. I'll indicate which those are when they get described in the future.