I made this small piece over the weekend. It measures 21" square and is made entirely from Dupioni silk. The flowers and leaves were hand drawn then everything else ws done by machine. This is the first in a new series I plan to execute.

I've been wanting to increase my self taught drawing skills and since quilting is my medium, I want to do the drawing on fabric. Working on Dupioni brings some intersting difficulties to the process as it has stong woven lines and nubs in it. I used colored pencil in a variety of name brands. These pencils can become permantant only if they have a wax base. The colored areas must be heat set to imbed the pigment pulled into the surface of the fabric along with the wax when it's heated up with a hot iron. Some of the color will come off durring this process leaving a shadowy result.

I layered the top with thin, black cotton batting and backing and used two different multicolored, Wonderfil, Silco threads to quilt around and in the flowers and leaves. I chose to do this quilting in colors that were lighter and purer than the colored sections to sort of highlight the flowers and leaves, I think it was really successful. The background is quilted in a tiny stipple using a 60wt cotton.

I then layerd a piece of Dupioni in a matching tint of red violet with the same cotton batting and backing and quilted in the words with the 60wt black cotton thread. This section was then bound and stitched onto the surface of the flower quilt - sort of a quilt within a quilt.

I love to add the written word to my work. The last series I worked on called "Telling Stories" included words printed on the computer. This new series, "She Said", will include words quilted into the quilt. Though the words are personal, they are not autobiographical and I hope they will ring true to many, varried women and men.

In this particular piece, which is called "She Was Happy", she says,

"It was a simple thing.

She was in love,

With a good man

and her beautiful

children, with the

world she had created.

Beauty dripped from her

fingertips and joy escaped

from her lips. She

knew she was complete.

She was in love,

and for a few moments

of every day,

she was happy."



Have a great week,

I'll talk to you again on Friday