| FAQ 6. How should a piece be best viewed? I’d like to think that my work is interesting enough that if you saw it from across a room, you’d want to walk over and view it. Then, as you get closer and closer, there’s more and more to see. One comment that I hear a lot is that “I could look at it for hours and never see everything”. That’s one of the best compliments that I feel I can get. 7. Why a rectangular shape? Many art quilters make pieces that are various irregular shapes and some of my early ones were. However, the images of the quilts are so intensive, that a simple outline seems to work best for me. Sometimes, I have fringe or tassels hanging below the edge, but usually the edges are just bound as you would any quilt. One of the hardest parts for me is squaring off the sides before putting on the binding. It would be easy to use a T-square and other measuring devices to even out the edges that have gotten skewed with the intensive sewing during the construction process if I didn’t use buttons and other large shapes which get in the way of tools. I do the best I can to square off the edges and make them straight, but any irregularities help to prove that these works were not made by a machine. 8. How much do the materials cost in a piece? I don’t keep track, but usually a single dichroic glass button is $4-6 US. I use whatever is needed to get the effect that I want. 9. Where do you do your work? What does your studio look like? The construction of the quilt tops are done in a bedroom turned studio. It’s filled with shelves of fabric and countless jars of buttons and beads sorted by colors. I need a lot of materials to inspire me in the beginning of a new piece, and then I whittle down what actually appears on its surface. While I long for one of those huge spaces where I could leave up my cutting and ironing boards, such is not the case. The actual sewing down of the pieces is done on a large drawing board on top of a small folding tray table in front of the TV. An advantage to my work is that it’s very portable, and I’ve worked on pieces sitting on my luggage in trains stations and in airport lounges all over the world.
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