After choosing fabric, the next step is to sew the individual pieces together into a single large piece called the “quilt top” (for any non-quilters who might be reading this). This process is greatly facilitated by having what is known as a “design wall” in one’s studio. In my case, I have one entire wall of my studio which is given over to said design wall. The studio wall was first covered in 8×4-foot sheets of Celotex, an insulation material which is light yet sturdy, and is easy to stick pins into. The insulation boards were then covered with gray felt. I had originally wanted white, but the fabric store didn’t have a sufficiently large amount of white. Not wanting to wait, I bought gray instead, and it ended up being a great choice – it’s less harsh and has a calming, soothing effect in the room. (In fact, I liked it so much, I’ve since painted several walls in my house a  nice cool gray). The felt was adhered to the boards with premixed wallpaper paste, a surprisingly easy process.

My design wall is 8 feet high, which was the outside limit of the size of piece I could make without radically altering my life. Practically, though, I needed some maneuvering room at top and bottom, so it ended up with 7.5 feet as the target size. I started with the smaller pieces, positioning them roughly about two thirds of the way up from the bottom, the area where I wanted the greatest amount of visual interest. The surface texture of the felt grabs on to cotton fabrics and lets you keep smaller sized pieces in place without using pins. (After putting lots of pieces together, though, it will eventually become too heavy to stick by itself and will require pins.) My main goal at this point was to fit the pieces together in the most efficient manner with a minimal amount of trim waste – rather like putting together a puzzle.

I use an industrial Juki to do all my quilting, but because of modifications made to my machine, it doesn’t work for the piecing process. For one thing, it only does a straight stitch, and I use a narrow zigzag to stitch my top fabrics together. Second, the Juki’s feed dogs have been removed. So I’ve kept my Bernina for piecing and some other purposes.

Working on a large piece like this was challenging, but on the upside, I got a lot more exercise than usual because it required a lot of up-and-down on a stepping stool to get to the upper reaches.

The piecing process was completed over the course of a couple of days. Here’s a little stop-action movie I made of this process.

Eastern Plains with Hay Rolls, Summer – ©2006 Deidre Adams

This kind of a field, with rolled hay bales, is a very common sight in eastern Colorado and Kansas. I’ve always loved these colors – pale yellow greens, straw golds, and the faded pale blue of a midday summer sky. It’s a typical scene that feeds my love of the horizon line.

As part of the process for the Anythink Library commission, I met and talked with members of the local community who live in the area near the towns of Bennett & Strasburg, about half an hour east of Denver. The interviews were part of an oral history project that the library is doing in conjunction with the artwork commission. We had some standard questions that we asked all of the participants, although the format was freeform and many of the people also contributed some personal memories and anecdotes that were quite entertaining. They were asked about how they had come to live there, what they liked and didn’t like about it, and what kinds of life lessons they had gained from living there. Some of the questions also focused on determining their impressions of the sights and sounds and smells that they experience living on the plains. In answer to the question about colors, by far the most common answer was green, golden brown, and blue (skies). That was a validation for me of the picture I had in mind of what I was thinking of doing; I was on the right track and ready to go.

As another aspect of the community involvement component, I wanted to make the quilt from fabric supplied by the local residents, so I asked them for donations. I was overwhelmed by the response – I received enough to make the entire top layer of the piece from fabrics supplied by the community. Some of these pieces have special meaning to the people who donated them, so I wanted to keep a record of each one. I kept a tiny swatch of each one in my sketchbook with the name of the person who donated it.

I also made a video to document the fabrics. I’m still not over the cringe factor of watching this with all its many faux pas, but at least it’s a good record for posterity.