My Crazy Life

My calendar is the school year, and in 1995-96, I decided to ’fluff my dendrites’ by taking on leadership positions. So whenever anyone asked, ‘Who wants to chair Science Fair?’, ‘Who will lead a den of Cub Scouts?’, ‘Does anyone want to be the preschool Fundraising Chair?’, ‘Why don’t we collect 24,000 Campbells Soup labels?’, ‘The quilt guild is looking for some new leaders’, ‘Can we have a goldfish?’, ‘Can we read all the Caldecott books?’, etc, my answer was YES. It was a busy year, and the next year this quilt hung near my phone so I could think twice before saying yes.

I was inspired by a lecture by Jane Hill on the mola art of the Kuna tribe in the San Blas Islands of Panama. I incorporated the life around me into my channel applique.

The channels cut from the front were fused to the back, and I wrote all over it.

Fun fact: this was the first time I used paper-backed fusible web. I used Heat-N-Bond Ultra (for a factor of safety). That stuff melts into something like a baking sheet. With 3 layers of fabric + batting, it ended up so stiff that it barely needed a rod to hang it. It has softened with age. But it gave me my favorite comment from a show judge: “Stands up well in stiff competition.”