The Huntington- Galleries (3 of 3)

The Creating Begins (2 of 5)

With the ties laid out before me, I was presented with my color palette, really heavy with two colors; navy blue and burgundy. At first it just seemed like a lot of dark color. But as I thought about this man, who had served his country with a long Naval career, a patriotic theme began to emerge. Still, I definitely lacked the white in “red, white and blue”. Store bought silk was the pricey, but only answer for a background color.

The first quilt was wall hanging size, in a star pattern. This one went to my brother who actually remembers borrowing some of these ties from our dad- an emotional connection I hadn’t even considered.

For my Moms quilt I expanded on this theme and created a lap sized quilt with a slightly different star shape. You can imagine the connection she has to these ties. Now she can see them draped on the back of her coach, instead of collecting dust in the closet.

Note how the look of this pattern changes as the size and overall shape of the quilt changes.It seems to me that when there's more background, you tend to either focus on the stars (which look more like crosses from a distance) or the lines. In the smaller version you take it in as a whole.

PS- Please forgive the less than ideal photo quality. I'm working on ways to improve that.😏