A year plus ago, I made the commitment to a 10 Year plan which helped me to zero in on the need to have a one person show- as a kind of summation of My Patchwork Life. This, my seventh one person exhibition, including fourteen quilts following its chapters, will occur in the fall of 2024 right here on the Southside at the BrewHouse. The exhibition, entitled DAYNEU. is taken from the Hebrew word meaning IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH.
The first quilt in this series is about A. TRUTH and based on quilts with circles. In Zen practice the circle, ensō, Ensō (円相) is a universal expression of wholeness, our true and innermost self in a myriad of things from reality to enlightenment.
Creating circles in patchwork is particularly challenging. Making clothing, I learned to set-in sleeves. In my early days of piecing, I applied these sewing principles to traditional drunkard paths and double wedding rings. Working with tee shirts, I got the innovative idea to take advantage of the stretch of the fabric to create free-form circles without patterns. This became the key technique to create many of my angels.



To start the quilt, my biggest problem was what materials to use. Go to my favorite online quilt shop? Half price day at the Salvation Army or The Goodwill bins? Then it hit me to go to my closet and voila- a perfect palette of greens and browns.

Zen Circles is composed of: Zen Center Robe, April Cornell Dress, EB Pepper Shirt, Fancy Tee, CP Shades Pants, J Jill Jacket, Panache tops and pants, Hemp Jacket, CP Shades Embroidery Jacket, MaryAnn’s Batiks, Heath’s custom Indian shirt, Naomi’s Bubbe Bed Sheet, Extra saved pieces of J Jill and CP Shades Tops, Sadye’s linen napkins.
As I make these DAYNEU Quilts, I determined that after the main quilt is completed, I will use up the leftovers-a kind of completion of the project. For this one, I settled on a traditional quilt pattern that I always loved because it looks like circles in the way it is pieced, even though the seams are straight.
