I started this quilt the week of the Eastern Kentucky floods. I grew up across the border in Southwest Virginia. The images of the debris entangled against the bridges and houses. The lives lost. I processed this through making this quilt. Lots of curves and sharp lines.

When I began, I thought I would use more of the rust fabric, but it felt important to use the vanilla fabric as a dominant background with the black fabric and thread outlining each piece. Mildred Haun’s short story, Darkness Coming Deep, inspired the name of this quilt. It is the story of the death of a child. I wanted to express the opposite of that pain, Light Coming Home. This quilt represents lightness coming to me through the making of this piece.

This quilt will be exhibited at QuiltCon Atlanta 2023 as part of the Windham Fabric Ruby & Bee Challenge.  These are the colors:

• Russet 51583-40
• Mandarin 51583-31
• Vanilla Custard 51583-53
• Pool 51583-45
• Cornflower 51583-46
• Stormy 51583-44

It measures 52.25″ x 52.25″.

I took some risks with the quilting. I used 30 weight Aurifil in black to define all of the seams and to add the illusion of piecing growing from each section. In some places I stitched in the ditch more than once. In other places, I used Sulky 28 weight in white. along with blues and rusts I had from my mother’s stash; some are probably 50 years old, but they worked great.