Tapping Me On The Shoulder

I hope I'm getting my blogging mojo back. As I look over the artwork I've created in the last year (in addition to writing my book!), I realize there are lots of quilts I haven't posted.

This is the biggest piece I made this year. It may be my biggest piece ever.

Multitudes, 51x51


You know how sometimes a word, song, image or theme mysteriously keeps appearing in your life? It just keeps tapping you on the shoulder? For me, it was a bit from Walt Whitman's poem Song of Myself.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

So I made a quilt. The bowl image is also tapping me on the shoulder, so I explored that again here. The bowl is full -- and yet it's empty. It's layered with details -- and yet it's spare and simple.

I challenged myself to compose the background of this piece very quickly. I added the light gray arch after the bowl and the flower shapes. There was too much dark gray before.


The quote is stitched with a layer of tulle. The "I" and the "c" were a little lost, so I restitched over them in yellow.


Some of the flower shapes are painted using a freezer paper stencil and others are simply outlined with an embroidered straight stitch.

I've been adding more free motion quilting to my work lately. I think this leaf motif worked out really well.


I was thrilled to hang the quilt in a lovely gallery in Plano. It's hanging next to my friend Lu's quilt and they really looked nice together.


I'm often thinking about my own multitudes. I hope next time you hear someone talk about "contradictions," or the complexity of humanity, you'll think of Whitman.