The Boulevard

The Boulevard is the main thoroughfare through my small city in Virginia.  It’s a four-lane route with restaurants and businesses flanking each side along with strip malls. I live a block off The Boulevard.  At night I see the lights of the businesses and the red lights from my living room.  In the early morning, it is quiet and I hear the trains flying by parallel to The Boulevard.   In this piece, I explored different ways of making a log cabin block to give the feel of The Boulevard.  My starting point was elongated log cabins, then playing with the width of the strips.  I added a traditional log cabin block to represent my home on The Boulevard.

It measures 38” x 38”.

I entered this quilt in the Modern Quilt Guild’s Log Cabin Challenge, sponsored by American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. It will be on display this week at QuiltCon in Atlanta, Georgia. I won’t be there, but I’m excited it will hang alongside so many amazing modern log cabin quilts.

I used 28 weight thread, mostly stitching in the ditch. I hoped it would give a feeling of driving lanes.

Day 53: Maggie L. Walker

No quilt photography today. I spent this morning at the Black History Museum in Richmond, Virginia, with my daughter. We viewed the exhibit, Yesterday’s Stories, Today’s Inspiration. There was a photograph of Maggie Lena Walker along with many other wonderful portraits. Walker was the first woman president of any race to charter a bank in the United States.

After our tour, we walked down to the corner of North Adams and West Broad Street where there is a statute of her. Those tassels on her dress caught my eye. From this angle she is a towering figure, and rightly so.