The use of fat quarters in my design is directly attributable to the way I purchased fabric for the first few oneshirts. The Quilt Basket in York, Nebraska has been “my store” for 30 years. I left high school early to attend York College as a 17 year old instead of my senior year at Hamilton Humanities Magnet in Los Angeles. My parents were leaving LA and staying behind fir my senior year was not as attractive as my fantasy of college life. In the early 1990s, York, Nebraska was a walkable small town with a variety of shops and was only just beginning to grapple with the impact of WalMart on the local economy.
Stopping by the Quilt Basket to pick up sewing supplies and fabric or to drop off one of my Bernina machines for service is a regular part of a visit to our cottage in a nearby village. I took all of the available coursework in Quilt Studies as part of my masters degree in Textile Science at University of Nebraska in 2003. One of the first things I learned about piecework quilting is that it is much more about consumption display of the huge variety of printed fabrics available after the invention and improvements of mechanized textile printing in the mid- and late-19th century. I feel this same impulse to buy small quantities of the many beautiful fabrics in order to enjoy the diversity of aesthetics on offer.
Forest is made from 2 fat quarters of two different batik fabrics and a yard of two other batik fabrics. The circles in brown is a colorway of the same fabric used in Origin. The trees inspired the name, although I love trees and forest is my natural habitat. The alternation of fabric at the front yoke and the back wings is due to the limited height of the yard, not quite enough to reach the height that 1 1/4 yards allows. The dotted light and dark sleeve are made from each of the fat quarters. The remaining pieces in the area of the armscye curves were used to make the pockets.