After many years, living at our farm in Northern Illinois, a subdivision was built across the road. As our new neighbors spread herbicide on their perfect lawns in the Spring, I took great delight in the cheerful and ubiquitous dandelion. Since permanent ink jet printing on fabric became possible, I have not been able to resist the temptation to make a periodic tribute to this persistent perennial.

The dandelion blossoms and leaves were scanned on a flatbed scanner. (Epson Perfection 1240U) The blossoms were laid directly on the glass and covered with a piece of blue fabric. The lid was left open. The images were enlarged to twelve inches square, and scanned at 300 dpi. This resulted in large images showing sharp details. Once scanned, the images were enhanced in Corel Draw. In most cases both the contrast and saturation were increased before printing on a Hewlett Packard Photosmart 2600 printer.

The entire quilt was designed in Corel Draw. The Fibonacci progression (1-2-3-5-8-13 etc.) was used to determine the proportions of the squares and rectangles. The dandelion images are surrounded by a border of dark blue and green fabric from the Glacier Park Collection by Benartex, which is based on my own original hand dyed fabrics. The binding is a blue to green fabric from my Gradations Collection.

Exhibitions:

• Bryerpatch Studio Gallery, Paducah, KY 2012-13
• 30 Quilts for 30 Years: Solo, traveling exhibition celebrating 30 years of making art quilts.
  • International Quilt Market & Festival, 2013, Houston TX, October 25–November 3, 2013
  • National Quilt Museum, Paducah KY, December 6, 2013 – March 11, 2014
  • Bryerpatch Studio Gallery, Paducah KY March 15, 2014 – May 1, 2014
  • Visions Art Museum, San Diego, CA, August 1, 2014 – September 21, 2014
  • Wisconsin Quilt Museum, Cedarburg, WI, January 14- April 12, 2015

Publications

• None as of October 2013