This 36″ x 36″ quilt is the third in what is becoming a series about the seven deadly sins. Our current state of capitalism is an economic system that depends on rampant consumerism and overconsumption of resources for its success, resulting in a world governed by greed. I was consciously and subconsciously inspired by the Beholder from the world of Dungeons & Dragons; Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors; Frank from Harley Quinn, the animated series; and Venus flytraps.
This is a whole-cloth quilt made with dupioni silk and polyester thread. I used the thread painting technique to create the eyeballs and flower petals, and free-motion quilting for the leaves, vines, and background quilting. This quilt was completed in July 2025.
I have become obsessed with dupioni silk over the last few years, and this latest quilt is my most ambitious application of this gorgeous fabric so far. I’ve always admired this nubby, raw-looking silk that shimmers in the light and, depending on how it’s woven, can even change colors when you look at it from different angles. But due to its price and my lack of experience, I shied away from using it in my quiltmaking process until I felt I had mastered enough techniques to not make a total mess of it.
Back in September of 2023, Shannon Reed and I made our annual trek to Oaks, PA for the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza to ogle the array of gorgeous quilts and, of course, to shop. Country Keepsakes was one of the vendors, and they had an incredible display of dupioni silks and I couldn’t stop thinking about them as we continued wandering through the show. Before we left, I bought two yards of fabric that I eventually turned into a whole-cloth quilt entitled: Behold My Beauty and Weep. (Click this link to read more details about the quilt pictured below.)
I absolutely loved working with this fabric, and I quickly decided I needed more. So when Shannon and I returned to the Extravaganza this past September, I had already planned to purchase another two yards of fabric for another whole-cloth quilt. And then, as luck would have it, I won a $50 gift certificate from the door raffle. Not only did I buy the two yards of silk I originally wanted, but I then added a bunch of fat quarters to my purchase, not sure what I would do with them but so excited to add them to my stash.
Also around this time, I realized I needed to think of an idea for the Brooklyn Quilters Guild biennial quilt show that would be happening at the end of April 2025. I decided pretty quickly that using my silks would be key in whatever design I came up with. After mulling it over for several days, I decided to try to up my transparency-and-curves-piecing game from when I took a Carolina Oneto workshop a few years prior.
Using Google Docs, I sketched out a few rough ideas of what I had in mind and finally landed on my final design.
Then I gathered all of my dupioni silks and started figuring out how they were going to work together. This is the point where someone who actually plans ahead would have exactly the right colors to make the transparency effect work perfectly, but I am generally not that person. I couldn’t really afford to buy more fabric, so I just worked with what I had. I imagine a color theorist will not approve of my final layout.
Because I was going to be piecing all of these silks together, I backed it all with a light-weight fusible webbing to prevent fraying. Dupioni silk frays like crazy, so this is a necessary step unless you want to pull all of your hair out during the cutting and sewing process. I then used the techniques I learned from Carolina Oneto’s workshop to recreate my digital sketch into a small quilt top.
Then it was time to figure out how I was going to quilt it. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know I love free-motion quilting, so that was a no-brainer. I am a big believer that the right quilting design enhances the quilt top, so I had to think about what would make the quilt top pop instead of distract from the beautiful silks. After staring and staring for days at my quilt top, I kept thinking about a dance hall with colored lights reflecting on the walls, which then made me think about a fancy New Year’s Eve party and the moment it strikes midnight and confetti and streamers begin falling from the ceiling.
Using shiny polyester thread, I quilted a sharp stipple pattern over the entire quilt top, interspersing confetti and streamer sections that puff up next to the densely quilted areas. I then quilted straight lines in the border to evoke a wooden frame effect surrounding the center design. And thus Colored Lights & Confetti was complete.
This will be on display at the Brooklyn Quilts! 2025 show on April 26 & 27, along with my what are you afrAId of? quilt which I posted about earlier this month. If you’re in the New York area the last weekend of April, you should come out and see the over 200 beautiful quilts that will be on display, along with raffles, vendors, workshops, and more. Feel free to reach out with any questions or comments, and keep making!
This 36″ x 36″ quilt was made for the 2024 Brooklyn Quilters Guild fence show, which is entitled THE STORIES WE TELL: Folktales, Fantasy & Folly. I knew I wanted to do something similar to my O, Beware… quilt with some kind of creature staring out through scales or feathers, etc. While looking for images of feathered dragons, I became intrigued with illustrations of Quetzalcoatl from Mesoamerican mythology. I used that as my inspiration, but I did not try to make any sort of authentic representation, as can be seen most blatantly by my addition of a horn.
The fabric is raw silk that changes from deep blue to magenta depending on the viewing angle and how the light hits it. Almost all of the thread is polyester except for the horn, which is a silver metallic, and the whites of the eye, which is cotton.
This 64″ x 44″ quilt is one of a series of three quilts I’m creating in response to the anti LGBTQ+ legislation happening in the country. As of the creation of this quilt in April 2022, Florida and Texas have enacted laws that will harm LGBTQ+ youth. Politicians in other states are trying to follow suit. California and Colorado currently have the most protections for LGBTQ+ youth in the country. They are represented by the two right side up light gray triangles in the field of “stars” in the upper left-hand corner of the quilt.
I am not a very outspoken person by nature and creating these quilts is not nearly as helpful as the amazing folks doing the brutal work of fighting back against this legalized bigotry, but this is a very minimal way I can contribute.
I’m appropriating the upside down pink triangle motif that homosexuals were required to wear in Nazi Germany. In the early 1980s, Avram Finkelstein, Charles Kreloff, Jorge Socarrás, Brian Howard and Chris Lione, and Oliver Johnston created the Silence=Death poster, turning the triangle right side up and changing the color to a hot pink/fuchsia. They wanted to change the symbol from one of victimization to one of empowerment. And their poster has become an instantly recognizable call to action in the LGBTQ+ community. However, I’ve flipped the triangle back to its original orientation as a stark reminder that history repeats itself.
The actual quilting consists of the following statement.
People are going to label this project as a series of political quilts, but I want to reiterate that no one’s sexual identity or gender identity is a political act. Our existence has absolutely nothing to do with politics. It is simply who we are, just as your sexual and gender identities are who you are. Just because you might have trouble understanding it doesn’t mean we are not deserving of the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as everyone else. But since our society seems to be insisting on making identity something that can be legislated, I feel compelled to speak out against the dangerous path our country is heading down. As of the creation of this quilt series, seven states have laws protecting LGBTQ+ youth. Seven states have no protections whatsoever. Two states have passed laws that actively endanger LGBTQ+ youth. The resulting physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual harm that will result from this hateful legislation will be the fault of the legislators who voted to pass these laws, the constituents who voted these legislators into office, and all who did not speak out in defense of the children who will be harmed. And they will be harmed. When these children are abused and bullied for being their bright and beautiful selves, where are they supposed to go to seek help now? How can anyone supporting these abhorrent laws possibly believe they will be on the right side of history?
“O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.” – Othello, Act III, scene 3, William Shakespeare
This 36″ x 36″ quilt was created as part of the “Going Green” Presidents’ Challenge for the 2023 Brooklyn Quilts! show. The only parameters of the challenge were that each quilt measure 36″ x 36″ and feature the color green. I decided to take my inspiration from Iago’s quote about jealousy being a green-eyed monster.
In this era of social media, I am constantly struggling with the balance of finding inspiration from my fellow creators with being insanely jealous of their various successes. I wanted my embodiment of envy to be both beautiful and slightly scary. We’re often drawn by others’ charisma, but our attraction can go to a dark place so easily.
I used a single piece of Cherrywood fabric and a high loft batting that were quilted together with various colors of polyester threads. I used the thread painting technique to create the monster’s eyeball and then free-motion quilted the rest.
This approximately 36″ x 36″ quilt was created for the Brooklyn Quilters Guild Earth Day fence quilt show. I used improv piecing to create a feeling of water gradually disappearing into nothingness. I then used free-motion quilting to outline the word “water” which is only slightly visible, symbolizing how this essential resource is disappearing around the world due to climate change and human-caused disruption.
According to the United Nations, one-sixth of the world’s population currently lives in areas of water scarcity, including parts of the United States. These numbers will only increase as climate change continues to affect the global environment. Though New Yorkers live in a seemingly water-rich area, it is important to be aware of our own water usage as part of our overall conservation procedures. Clean water is a universal human right.
This 53″ x 46″ quilt was made for the 2023 Brooklyn Quilts! show put on by the Brooklyn Quilters Guild. It was completed in February 2023. It is mostly machine pieced with hand-appliqued triangles sewn on the borders. The middle panel is quilted with roses and the borders are quilted with leaves. The binding is a rainbow patchwork made with the same fabrics as the triangles.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve been very distressed by the growing amount of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric I’ve been hearing from American politicians. As a result, I’ve been working on a separate series of quilts that very explicitly express my feelings. When I began thinking of a new quilt for the upcoming BQG quilt show, I did not start out with the idea of continuing that series. However, as it all began coming together, I realized I had created another quilt that expresses a new facet of my feelings about our society, albeit a little more implicitly than my previous three quilts. The triangle and rainbow motifs are a somewhat obvious connection to the LGBTQ+ community. But taking a step back, I began to see some unintended symbolism of small beautiful color groups then joining together with neighboring groups to form a much larger, even more beautiful community. The idea being that it is perfectly normal and even healthy for people to belong to communities in which they feel safe and comfortable as long as they accept that their community is not the only or most important community that exists and that the world is so much more interesting when it is not homogenous.
Once I started putting the quilt together, I began picturing the rose garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and decided to use matching thread to quilt roses over the middle panel of triangles. You can see the quilting motif more easily on the back of the quilt which is pictured below. Welcome to my Community Garden.
This quilt was made for the Brooklyn Quilters Guild’s third outdoor quilt show that took place in October 2021. The theme of the show was “Come Together,” inspired by the Beatles song. I call this quilt Convergence. It is by far the most quilting I’ve ever done on a quilt, so I’m sure glad it was only 36″ by 36″! Watch the video to find out more details about how this quilt “came together.”
Welcome to Camp Coy was commissioned by my friends David and Ryan as a gift for the person who officiated at their wedding. What an honor for me! This is a wall hanging for their friend’s home up in the Adirondacks. Be sure to watch the video to hear all of the details about this reverse applique quilt!
This quilt was made for the Brooklyn Quilters Guild’s second fence show where the theme was Earth Day. I made his quilt to bring attention to the global water scarcity crisis, and so I named this quilt Scarcity. Please check out water.org to learn more about this crisis that affects us all, whether we live in a water-rich or water-scarce area of the world.
Boy Meets Quilt 