Day 2. Ribbons And Roses, A Wallhanging, 1997, Denver Colorado

In 1997 Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine sponsored a Rhapsody of Roses contest. The magazine was housed in Golden, CO and would hang the 43 finalists’ quilts in the quilt gallery there. We were preparing to move to Atlanta, GA and I was bound and determined to have another quilt hung in that gallery one more time before we left Colorado. I soon was informed that the group of quilts would not only be displayed there but would be on a 15 month tour of the US as well as Europe, including Paris, France and Innsbruck, Austria. The tour would end with a display at the IQA Quilt Show in Houston.

I was excited and I panicked! We were building a new house in Atlanta and by the time I had to send the quilt in, I would not have a forwarding address. I was in constant contact with IQA explaining the situation and made extra sure that I had detailed instructions on how to deliver the quilt to my husband’s office in Atlanta. When I knew that the quilt was on its way back to me, I had everyone on alert for the delivery. Then, one afternoon, our doorbell rang. It was special delivery and there was the quilt. To this day, I don’t know how they knew my new house address. I was relieved to say the least.

The following was my artist statement for “Ribbons and Roses”:

There is nothing that brings more pleasure than receiving a bouquet of roses wrapped in ribbon. My husband always seems to find beautiful pink or lavender roses to celebrate special occasions. The hand-dyed fabric created by DyeSmithy seemed to provide the perfect palette to express the theme in cloth. Ribbons and Roses was conceived on the computer through Electric Quilt 3. The border design is original. It is paper-pieced on the machine, hand-appliqued and hand quilted. The quilting design in the center was inspired by a pattern, “Wild Roses”, in Quilter’s Newsletter, March 1997.