Design Concept

This is the first of a series of quilts made for Poetic Threads, a joint exhibition by the Peninsula Fiber Artists and a group of Olympic Peninsula authors. We will be making a series of fiber pieces to go with a series of poems by the authors. For this piece, I chose a poem called Underneath the Rhody by Dianne L. Knox.

My design began with a photo I took of a pink Rhododendron blossom in my garden. I simplified the photo, erasing blossoms I didn’t want and adding stems and leaves with digital painting. After many hours of digital painting and adjustments, I added the photo of one of my hand-painted fabrics as a background and altered the colors to complement the pink blossoms. I designed matching binding strips and sent the images to Spoonflower to be printed on cotton fabric.
The blossoms are very heavily quilted, almost to the level of machine embroidery. The background is quilted in a series of improvisational swoops and curves.

Exhibitions:

• None as of 02/03/2026

Publications

• None as of 02/03/2026