Liberated Quilts

Gwen Marston, Rita Mae Pettway, Ed Johnetta Miller, Radka Donnell, and Maria Shell are some of the quilters who have influenced me. Following are examples of works of mine that show their influence.

When I first started quilting, I discovered a revolutionary book called Liberated Quiltmaking by Gwen Marston. Gwen changed my idea and enjoyment of quilting from that time forward. I immediately signed up for her retreat on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. She taught me how to hand quilt and how to construct liberated houses and other liberated blocks. We became quilt friends and I took workshops from her over the years. As program chair, I invited her to teach a workshop for the Farmington Valley Quilters, and she stayed in my home for a week. We just sewed and sewed. Following are some of the quilts that came out of those sessions.

Gwen Marston and me at her retreat

Home Sweet Home

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2004. 22 x 39 inches

After learning the basics of traditional quilting and studying old quilts, Gwen Marston found herself admiring and attracted to the surprise and spontaneity of some of those older quilts. The utility quilts were made by women, isolated from the mainstream quilt world, who had to make do with materials at hand to provide warmth for their families. She based her own work on those charming old quilts and made ones that gave her the same feeling. This liberated quiltmaking, as she called it, also became my preferred method.

Liberated quilting allows me to leave the constraints of tradition with its set patterns and rulesof matching corners, perfect star points, and identical, tiny quilting stitches. It is a process-based method which allows for artistic freedom without abandoning solid design principles and good technique. Design-as-you-go uses intuition and emotion to produce innovative and surprising results. There is no right or wrong.

Stripes and Flowers

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2012. 12 x 14 inches

Small Happiness

Cotton quilt, hand tied

2017. 12 x 13 inches

Nine Tales

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2008. 62 x 62 inches

Secret Stories

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2008. 32 x 42 inches

Quilting with Rita Mae Pettway

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2010. 34 x 41 inches

Rita Mae Pettway (b. 1941)

“Housetop”—twelve-block “Half-log Cabin” variation from Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts

Cotton, cotton/polyester blend, corduroy

Circa 1975. 84 x 70 inches

Lillie Mae Pettway (1927–1990)

“Housetop”—twelve-block “Half-log Cabin” variation from Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts

Cotton, wool, corduroy

Circa 1965. 77 x 65 inches

The Gee’s Bend quilters were descendants of slaves on the Pettway plantation on the isolated peninsula of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. They were doing liberated quilting long before Gwen wrote her book in 1996. Their physical separation from the mainstream quilters of their time allowed them the freedom to make wondrous creations of art based on traditional patterns using materials at hand. Their quilts are very surprising. They seemed to take traditional designs and stand them on their ear, taking one traditional block and making it as large as a bed-sized quilt, for example, or turning blocks around in unexpected ways and odd combinations.

I first ran into the quilts of the Gee’s Bend quilters at the Whitney Museum in NYC in 2003. These fabulous works of art stunned me with their visual impact, so vibrant and full of life. Some of these women came to Hartford in 2010, showed their quilts, and had a little sewing bee that I attended. Rita Mae Pettway was there. I had already fallen in love with her quilt (left) from the book and had re-created it in a smaller version (opposite page). I struck off in that direction for a while, and still come back to the housetop half log cabin (or sweep) block that I used here and on Four by Four (below).

Four by Four

Cotton quilt, machine quilted 2004. 47 x 56 inches

Ed Johnetta Miller of Hartford is another wonderful teacher of mine. Her quilting is liberated in a different way. She has developed methods of raw-edge appliqué, improvisation, and embellishment as if she had never encountered the quilting police. Her quilts are meant as wall pieces. She convinced me to join the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). This group of art quilters has supported me these past ten years, getting me to experiment and widen my horizons. They keep me going with workshops and quilt challenges. The next two quilts were started in Ed Johnetta’s class.

photo: Leonard Hellerman

French/African

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2010. 32 x 18 inches

Green Back

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2010. 34 x 32 inches

Radka Donnell from Boston was first an artist and then a quilter. She was a pioneer in believing that quilts could be fine art and not only a craft. I saw her show at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, in 2009 and heard her speak. Most of her work was done quickly. She lived in a small apartment and had no dedicated studio. She cut up her fabric, laid it out on the floor, sewed it together, and cleaned everything up all before her kids came home from school. She used the fabric she had available (some of it pretty ugly, I thought), and made it into beautiful works of art.

I wanted to try that technique, too. The next two pieces were inspired by her art. I cut fabric into small pieces, arranged them on card stock, and sewed them together. I thought I would use these designs as a jumping off point for a large quilt. The large quilt languished on my design wall for ten years (imagine if I had to clean it up each day before the kids came home from school!). I finally finished Leavіng Tracks (below) for this show. I do love it, but it ended up much smaller than I had imagined.

Mama’s Garden

Fabric stitched to paper

2009. 21 x 25 inches

Ode to Radka

Fabric stitched to paper

2009. 21 x 25 inches

Leaving Tracks

Cotton quilt, machine quilted

2020. 41 x 52 inches

work in progress on my design wall

Making Tracks

Cotton quilt, machine quilted 2020. 30 x 40 inches

Maria Shell is my most recent modern quilting influence. Making Tracks and Box Cars were both made after reading her book and taking a workshop from her on Zoom, in 2020 fashion.

Box Cars

Cotton quilt, machine quilted 2020. 37 x 45 inches

Chairs have played a role in my art across time and I wanted to show the pieces together. Following are some examples of chair art including liberated chairs inspired by Kathy Peters of Marquette, Michigan.

Garden Chair

Polaroid transfer onto paper Circa 1990. 11 x 13 inches

Tiny Chairs

Cotton quilt, machine quilted 2012. 12 x 14 inches