Photo used with permission from E.R. Degginger, photographer.

Original pencil sketch

For many years a small clipping from a magazine hung over my desk. It was a picture of spirogyra, a single cell organism, taken through a microscope. It was put away in a file for a couple of years, but the image was still in my head. This quilt is a loose interpretation of my memory of the image I looked at for so many years. Spirogyra, by the way, is the scientific name for a filamentous alge, commonly known as "pond scum".

This entire quilt is a study in intersecting color and value gradations. The rainbow colored checks were made from a black and white striped fabric, which was overdyed in 12 colors of the color wheel. They were pieced in strips between strips of graduated light to dark purple, green, and blue. The convoluted curved templates behind the circles were cut from a large piece of fabric which had been dye painted in a gradation of dark colors. The circles were cut from a lighter colored solid rainbow gradation. The background behind the convoluted curves graduates from black on the sides to light gray in the center.

The circles were quilted in a pebble pattern.The background and the checks were quilted in interlocking organic curves that suggest flowing water or braided fibers.

Exhibitions:

• Quilting the Quilt, 2002, Duluth, MN Honorable Mention
• International Quilt Assoc. Show, 2002, Houston, TX • Fairfield Master Award for Contemporary Artistry
• Explorations: Invitational Art Quilt Show, 2003-2004: The Wesserling Textile Museum, France, June 21- September 21, 2003
  The Ohio Craft Museum January 24 - March 28, 2004, Mansfield (Ohio)Art Center June 14 - July 30, 2004
• Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, 2003 (juried) Williamsburg, PA
• "Evolving Styles - 20 Years of Color & Design" Solo Exhibition: LaConner Quilt Museum, LaConner WA, March 16 - May 15, 2005
• American Quilters Society Show, 2003, Paducah, KY
• Caryl Bryer Fallert: Silver Star Salute: Retrospective Exhibition, International Quilt Market & International Quilt Festival, October 27-November 5, 2006, Houston, TX
• Quilts by Caryl Bryer Fallert, (solo exhibition) Gallery I: Opal Frey Gallery, Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, July 17–August 11, 2007
• Masters Art Quilts:(Invitational) Traveling October 2008-February 2010
  • International Quilt Festival Houston International Quilt Festival in Chicago, Illinois, April 17 - 19th 2009
  • International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, California, July 24 - 26th 2009
  • Museum of the American Quilter's Society in Paducah, Kentucky, August 13 - November 10, 2009
  • New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, November 19, 2009 - February 14, 2010
• Bryerpatch Studio, Paducah KY 2011-2014
• Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts, (retrospective exhibition of my work) Cedarburg, WI, January 14-April 12, 2015

Publications

• Explorations: Invitational Art Quilt Show, 2003 invitation/postcard
• AQS Catalog of Quilts 2003: p. 82
• Masters: Art Quilts: Lark Books 2008, Cover & p. 226