Two (three) Quilts

Dear Mom,

I think we're probably all still getting caught up from last weekend. These are two of the little quilts I made for some of the birthday celebrants. There's a third, too, but no picture - I was finishing up the quilting and binding in the car on the way up, naturally.

This one was for our artist. I wanted to make something that was art-like.

So I made a quilt of an apple in front of a river, in front of a hilly village. The round shapes of the applique'd apple and circles echo the swirling curves of the village print and the batik. We are located in front of the quilt, with the apple aloft, wondering if we have thrown the apple in the river or if we are merely in mid-toss, soon to catch the apple in our outstretched hand. The distinctive formal juxtapositions create a playful feeling that is contained and codified by the assymmetrical border and bias plaid binding; the optical suggestions of the spatial relationships suggest a participation in the critical dialogues of late. (It's an Art Critique Generator!)

This is E's quilt: I had a different goal - just to make something that would be a little weird, and interesting to look at if one were, say, sick in bed for a few days.

All of these fabrics are vintage, except for the black square, and the striped backing/binding. The radish, village, and blue flowered fabric were given to me by my friend Mary. I found the block pattern in a quilting magazine, and liked how simple it was. Good for weird fabrics, those simple blocks. The third quilt "quotes" some of the fabrics used in both of these.

Keeping things small and weird,
Gwen