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The Box Lid that Got a Stencil
After I made the demo box for the blog post, "Covering a Two-Piece Box with Single Sheets," I realized the box wasn't done. It needed some kind of decoration or indicator that it was a special box, of...
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A Curtain Becomes a Quilt: Catch It Before It Falls
In the late 1980s, I made a clear vinyl postcard quilt with pockets for a friend (whose idea it was), then several more for myself and other friends, and then a few years later we began to see pockets...
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Happy Leap Day!
I really hadn't given much thought to frogs. I knew vaguely about the endangered red-legged frog, but I hadn't been following their ups and downs. So, when I had a dream about one I was puzzled,...
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Rosie Lee Tompkins Quilts at Berkeley Art Museum
Way back in the '90s, a friend (my first book arts professor and mentor, also) and I were curious about quilts and went around looking at quilt exhibits together. She recently reminded me that we once...
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Spring in Progress and as Process
We just reset the clocks. Spring forward. It's funny how we say that spring is coming, that it has a first day of issue, and yet, it doesn't just arrive through the mail slot, it creeps in, perhaps,...
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Star 82 Review Spring 8.1 Is Live!
It's nice to have something to sustain us in these impossibly turbulent times. This particular issue of Star 82 Review, the twenty-ninth, is full of thoughtful, amusing, and heartfelt work. I think it...
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Looking for Joy: a New Art Quilt
Seeing the Rosie Lee Tompkins quilts at Berkeley Art Museum reinvigorated my art practice and inspired a quilt based on scraps and velvet. As I started laying out scraps, cutting them and moving them...
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In Other Words: Social Distancing
I had to mail a prepaid package, so I took a walk to the post office to drop it off. "What's it like out there?" I was asked. We are in a moment to which we have nothing to compare, where life appears...
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Magnolia: an Art Quilt
From ice dye to magnolia petals. The Grateful Dead's joyful song, "Sugar Magnolia" comes to mind: "blossoms blooming" and "Come on out singing." The magnolia has a sentimental association for me,...
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Instructions: Spring Flower Fold Book (not just) for Kids
It was only Day 6 of the San Francisco Bay Area's shelter-in-place directive, but I could already feel that our neighbors with kids were looking for creative ways to stay occupied. I heard Yo-Yo Ma on...
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Art Is But a Dream
It may seem odd, but in the midst of this upheaval that is so sad and causing so much disruption, some of us still need quiet moments, alone. For me, this is where creativity originates. Every few...
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Social Distance, the Art Quilt
For some reason I feel compelled to document this strange time. So many new ideas as we adjust to this new culture. It occurred to me that quilts are often about mapping. They use grids. Pieces are...
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It Was Supposed to Be a Luxury: Art Quilt
I think the first realization that the coronavirus was inching closer to home was when it literally was: the cruise ship Grand Princess was brought in to dock in Oakland. It was so enormous I could see...
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DIY Sewn Face Mask: Instructions
My sister asked me if I was going to be making face masks. I hadn't planned on it. But since various agencies have started recommending them, and I had cut out a pattern printed in the New York Times,...
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Heard Mentality: a Tabletop Quilt
I have bags of small-sized scraps of batting, and no more large pieces, so I am making what I call "tabletop" quilts. Quiltlets, really. I also have a big bag of fabric scraps, so we have a match! The...
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Potential for Kindness
We are asked to wear face covers when we go out in public, to stay six-feet apart, and to wash our hands frequently to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The face covers we wear are, for the...
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Cagey: an Art Quilt
I'm still here. And I'm making small quilts from whatever I've got. For this one I pulled out various scraps of fabric on which I had letterpress printed wood type and ironed them while I considered...
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Mail Art Revival? Instructions for New Folded Envelope
Addendum 4.21.20: here is an alternate link to my website for the images.Maybe it never went away, but mail art was popular and an active part of my life in the 1980s and 1990s. Accumulating rubber...
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Solitary: a Tabletop Quilt
I pieced this little quiltlet as I was finishing "It Was Supposed to Be a Luxury," but it took a couple weeks before I figured out how I wanted to quilt it. I liked the abstract quality of the shapes,...
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Blue Sky Eyes: a Tabletop Quilt
In celebration of the clean air we have revealed by staying out of our cars, the next quiltlet honors the sky. I pieced some blue scraps together with the intention of using some suminagashi on fabric...
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