Stones (Rectangles) (2009)

Hand-painted cotton, machine pieced

13.5 x 11 inches

The first trials I did for quilts about stones were done from commercial fabrics, none of them leading anywhere. It became clear that commercial fabric was part of the problem, and I decided to learn how to paint and dye my own fabric. I got the confidence to try this by taking a summer workshop in watercolor and pastel, in which I learned the principles of mixing color. I started with painting fabric, which I could learn on my own from books. I was interested in capturing the color and texture of stones. Some I cut into rectangles and pieced together.  I liked this small composition, but couldn't find a way to make it larger.  If I expanded it by putting together many more rectangles of this size, it just looked like a tile floor. If I cut larger pieces out of the painted fabric, I lost the subtleties of color and texture that I could get by cropping out the smaller pieces.