I made this quilt top when I was the artist in residence at the de Young museum during the month of March. It was just about the most fun I ever had, the residency, that is. But making this was a treat as well. When I started, all I knew was that I wanted to sew a bunch of this aqua blue bias, so I picked these orange fabrics to set it off. The stuff on the left came from a garage sale--the maker was selling this "failure" from a dye class, perfect for my purposes. After a while I realized I was making a river, so I ended up adding some tributaries and mountains and etc., then quilted it all over with crazy salmon. My only real disappointment came when I took the last stitch on the binding and hung it up on the wall of my studio: the edges looked like the edge of a potato chip. There was nothing to do but to tear it off and figure some way to make it lay flatter. What I ended up doing was just folding the top and back together and whip stitching them--no binding at all. Now it hangs pretty flat and behaves pretty well.
The thing is, it is all enjoyable. Sewing the strips on, quilting it, binding it--I never get tired of taking some simple materials and turning them into something I like to look at. It is, as they say, a hoot. This one is called "Up The River of Good Intentions."
