Queen Anne's Revenge Press: Making Things

Color Study #1, 12" x 12", front view

Color Study #1, 12" x 12", back view

I starting making these things last spring in Alabama, picking out the colors and cutting the squares. I sewed them together in Philadelphia this summer. I pieced them impulsively, intuitively making decisions about color. I quilted them this fall, back in Alabama. It has been an extremely busy fall and one of my simple pleasures was working on these pieces at the end of day. Each night setting a little goal for myself: sew for the length of one Columbo episode. It was something I could accomplish, requiring little thinking and eventually they were all finished.

Very early on in my life of making things I was a young mom, often distracted, without much time or cash. Making quilted things was the way in which I developed a studio practice. Fifteen minutes was about the maximum time I had to focus on anything. So I needed to make things that I could pick up and put down. Something that could be interrupted. Something that could be folded up and put away. Something transportable. And I gravitated to sewing.

These days, with my daughter grown, I have a lot more time in the studio. However, I am often overwhelmed at how fast things are moving. My days feel packed with people and obligations and work and time passes quickly by me. I am tugged daily by the current of a long list of things to do. I feel the pull of stress and distraction.

Piecing and sewing, this is a way of working that I am revisiting in my practice since my move to Alabama. Working in small steps with materials that fold up and are carried with me. Materials that can be spread out on the bed as I work and watch television. The result is secret side projects--things that are not prints.