A member of my quilt guild was honored to show a number of her amazing quilts. She herself was there, which was lovely to see.
Zena moved to California in the 70s, from Chatsworth to Chatsworth. She got involved with the local historical society and found herself making a quilt. That was it, since then she has been quilting like crazy. Her chosen medium is appliqué and hand quilting. Although I’m not sure if she still hand quilts today – she certainly still appliqués. As she said: what am I going to do? Mop floors? No, we need beautiful quilts, not clean floors
Many of her quilts are an homage to her country of birth. Oh and they are all hand made.
This one is a pure white silk whole cloth quilt….. she did all the quilting from the back side- so as not to get the front dirty…. the design is based on her bedroom wall paper…. Inspiration can come from everywhere. this kind one workmanship is one of a kind
I think this was called Ode to a Grecian Urn. the white area clearly has trapunto, the rest look like the decorations one would find in lovely books and manuscripts
A close up, just to give you a better idea. Oh, all those narrow stems? Quarter inch bias fabric – which allows it to be twisted and turned into all those incredible shapes
Oh my, look at this alphabet, I love how the background is that deep rich brown. Her choices of color are just as amazing as the workmanship.
Anyone who has worked creatively will be familiar with the book the Encyclopedia of Ornament, put out by Dover Publications, will immediately recognize all these band designs from there. Well, with an addition of some lovely flower.
Her interpretation of the Book of Kells, she took the best images from the book and created her own amazing design. Notice, I’m not the only one taking pictures
I didn’t have my good camera, so this is the close up you get from my phone – which is also rather old. Of course there were more of her quilts. I didn’t take pictures of all of them. She was there with friends selling basic patterns of some of her small motifs. She has written a book about appliqué. I am thrilled that she is still working away.
Leah