Back To My Color Roots?

My friend Mary Stori remarked that some of the current work I am doing reminds her of the colors I used when she met me 30 or so years ago.
Maybe it’s what comes around goes around.
Yet with the availability of today’s fabrics there is no comparison to what we had to work with 30 –40 or more years ago. I remember how excited we got when we found some of the newest most sophisticated fabrics at the time.
I remember Jeff Gutcheon telling me he would buy any yellow fabric he could find even if it was ugly! Yet, when I worked with him as he developed his first line of fabrics, there was NO yellow!

Autumn Rainbow was a break through piece for me. I used only solid colors which were extremely difficult to find at the time. I also included some lames. It was one of the first quilts I won a first place with. Yet more importantly it was the piece that developed my Tubular Spiral Patchwork technique that I went on to teach across the Midwest.

My Tree Of Life quilt was inspired by vintage quilts, yet was not a copy of anyone in particular. I did created kits for this as part of my Historic Concepts series. The kits are now collector items as I sold the last of them.

I designed and drafted this fan quilt. I taught it several times and it was not only a good learning experience in piecing and applique, but if was an excellent learning experience is using and balancing color and a variety of types of fabrics.
I remember my granddaughter Heidi who was probably 7 years old looking at one of my quilts and saying that looks like a “grandma” quilt. I thought she meant it looked like it was made my an “old grandma”. NO….that she meant was she could tell I made it as she knew the colors I used. (I had started her playing with color when she was between 7 and 10 days old. by the time she was about 3 she could arrange a box of 64 Crayola crayons in color flow order.
If you are following my recent color choices with my knitting and strip piecing I think you will see what Mary Stori was saying.