Tag: Modern Quilt

The Gripe Session

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This is THE GRIPE SESSION.

A quilt I made with my friends, Maggie Schubert and Kat Van Bourgondien. We made it for the Modern Quilt Guild’s Quiltcon fabric challenge.

55” x 55”

The fabric is Artisan Cotton by Windham Fabrics. It wasn’t selected for the show, and I’m sad about that, but we’re exhibiting it at our guild’s show, Make Mine Modern, at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, in Newport News, Virginia February 26-March 1, 2026.

Our artist statement:

The Gripe Session began as banter among friends on one of those days when everything seemed to go wrong.  “Bang Head Here” became both instruction and release—stitched again and again. It’s a vent and a Valentine to persistence: proof that when all you can do is bang your head, you might as well make it soft.

See my quilt at Virginia Quilt Museum

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My quilt, Light Coming Home, is on display at The Virginia Quilt Museum through December 20, 2025.

My quilt is part of an exhibit titled MODern Quilting: A selection of quilts from Quiltcon Shows.

Light Coming Home was part of Quiltcon 2023.

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.

Hot Flashes

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This is the fourth quilt in my Unmentionables series. This quilt embraces menopause and hot flashes. Unlike the other quilts in the series, the design uses only handwork and an experimentation in creating flames with thread.  

My mother, Rhoda Alice, made the appliqué girls on the back from clothes she made for my sister and me. Polyester! And those prints are adorable plus the color combinations were inspired.

Some of the embroidered words are other words for hot flashes. And, some are expressions of how I felt or I was feeling through menopause. My favorite is “Lexapro doesn’t work; neither does standing naked in the snow.” I had a few hot flashes while making this quilt and that’s why it says, “there’s sweat on this quilt.”