Way back when the clothing I wore would be made either by my mother or by the neighborhood tailor, my mother and I would go to the fabric store to purchase the fabric before the clothes could be made. Through frequent visits to the fabric stores, I developed a passion for fabric. I like the uniqueness of the fabric. Fabric is uniquely made just like you and I are uniquely made, and it continues to evolve every day with new threads.
I taught myself how to sew out of necessity (more like frustration). Since my size is small, buying readymade clothes that fit me is a challenge, so I started making my own clothes. Eventually I became pretty good at sewing. In order to embellish the clothes that I made, I learned how to make applique or small quilting motifs to incorporate into my clothes.
A project idea came when my daughter was getting married. We wanted to make a guest sign-in quilt. The quests did excellent jobs to make their blocks interesting, now it was up to me to put the blocks together and make the quilt memorable. I wanted to give the quilt a more contemporary look by quilting it in free motion. Free form quilt making is new to me, so I did a bunch of studying and research. It is during the research process I discovered that quilts can be made to be hung on the wall, like a painting. I realized that when I see something, places, or people that delight and touch my heart, I could make quilts to express those feelings.
I am fortunate and thankful to be a cancer survivor. I remember vividly the various emotions I had when I went through the diagnostic and treatment process. I was afraid, angry and disgusted with the chemotherapy. While I was looking for some kind of closure for my cancer journey, the idea came to me that there are many cancer patients out there who probably have gone through similar emotions like I had. Wouldn’t it be awesome if these emotions could be captured via the fabric arts! I love fabrics! Have I said that before? That is how the emotion series got started!
When you look at the emotion quilts, you will see colorful waves emanate from the head of a little stick figure. The color of the fabrics depicts the moods, like red for anger, yellow for happiness, purple for sadness, green for disgust, rainbow for peace, etc. Even though the inspiration for making emotion quilts come from the strong feeling of me facing the cancer crisis, but the emotions are shown in everybody. It’s just when one faces the crisis one can recognize the emotions much stronger.
About the tree bark series featured under the floral menu, in 2017 I went to Taiwan to attend my niece’s wedding. While I was there, my brother-in-law gave me a photo album as a gift. To my delight, inside the album, there are 60 tree bark photos, each one with different shape, color and texture. It’s just absolutely stunning! It occurred to me that it would be really interesting to make a tree bark quilt series. See the tree bark image on the left; this is a photo from the album. The tree bark quilt corresponding to this photo is tree bark3.
I hope that my art quilts will enlighten you, brighten your mind, and can lead you to realize you are not alone to face whatever crisis you face, and most importantly, can add joy to your life.