Design Concept

Eleanor Peace Bailey was a world-famous cloth doll maker and the most excentric of all my good friends. Our paths crossed many times as we both traveled the world teaching textile arts and lecturing about our specialties. Eleanor taught thousands of (mostly) women to make cloth dolls and in her lectures, she snuck in a lot of information about what it is to be human. She got a standing ovation at every one of her lectures. Eleanor was a large woman in every sense and dressed herself as she dressed her dolls in layers of flamboyant color and pattern, even when traveling by plane, dining at a local restaurant, or singing in the church choir. You couldn’t miss her. I miss her.

This quilt was made especially for an installation by the Peninsula Fiber Artists in the Fiber Habit Window in Port Townsend, Washington. The installation was called Funky Ladies and was curated by Evette Allerdings. It included two of Eleanor’s original dolls.

The design for the quilt came from a photo of Eleanor taken in one of her classes. I combined the photo with digital painting and one of my hand-painted fabrics from the 1990s. It is free-motion quilted with many colors of polyester and acrylic thread.

Exhibitions:

• Funky Ladies, Peninsula Fiber Artists, Fiber Habit Window, Port Townsend, WA, April -May, 2024

Publications

• None as of 04/08/2024