Design Concept

This is part of a series in which 1/2", constructed tucks are incorporated into a pieced background.   This is also the fifth in a sub-series exploring various relationships between checks and gradations of rainbow colors. During the time I was making this quilt, there was a large earthquake in San Francisco. I had just returned from Australia and, being seriously jetlagged, I stayed up all night watching the disaster unfold on TV. The next morning, I put a zigzag slash across the quilt and filled it with black and white checks. One side of the tucks is made from a hand dyed gradation of pure rainbow hues, and the other sides are made from black and white striped fabric that looks like checks. The twisting of the tucks and the gradations of color give the sense of movement.

Successive borders are made from a commercial, rainbow-striped fabric and checks made from a black & white stripe. On the back of the quilt is a traditional “Monkey’s Wrench” block, pieced from black and white stripes and rainbow stripes.

Binding the irregular edges of this quilt was one of the most challenging tasks in my quilting career, and I subsequently resisted to urge to make other nonrectangular pieces.

This quilt was purchased by Johnathan Shannon in 1991, to hang in the Archbishops Mansion in San Francisco, and was donated to the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles in 2020.

Exhibitions:

• FACET Traveling Show, American Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA, 1990 and traveling to other venues through 1991.

Publications

• New Wave Quilt: Excellences of Excellences, Mitsumura Suiko Shoin, p. 79
• Surface Design Journal, Summer 1991, p. 27