Bebop in the Small of Her Back

I love this quilt because it taught me several new techniques, and it taught me how to be an artist and business woman.

The first technique the quilt taught me is something I call abstract positioning.

1. Draw free form shapes on a large piece of paper.
2. Place a layer of white muslin on top of the paper and trace the shapes from the paper onto the muslin.
3. Number the shapes on the paper and the fabric and cut each numbered shape from the paper to use as patterns.
4. Audition fabric, cut the shape from the paper pattern and attach the fabric shape to the corresponding numbered shape on the muslin base.
5. After all the shapes are basted to the muslin base, stitch all around the edges of the shapes using a machine satin stitch.​

I used green thread because green seemed to play nice with all of the other colors in the quilt.

​When you complete a quilt top, I find the best thing to do before adding batting and the back of the quilt, is to hang the quilt top on your design wall and let it sit there. Each day and throughout the day, take a look at it and see what it's saying. 

In this case, I saw the outline of a woman's body, a woman's dancing body.

Consider the above detail without the beads and without the raised effect. Think of it as flat and congruent with the rest of the quilt.

One day, as I passed, I saw the curved body of a woman from the back, and she was wearing skimpy bottoms like dancers sometimes wear. The next thought was to push the form out and away from the rest of the quilt so that she would stand out. That meant it was time to make decisions about the quilt back, batting and what to use to stuff the form.

Bebop in the Small of Her Back, 2001, cathleen margaret

The quilt is machine quilted (stippled); the first green border is pleated, there's hand embroidery and beadwork.

This was a commissioned piece. I contacted the buyer when I completed work on the quilt. The buyer never returned my calls. Bebop taught me to always require a substantial down payment before beginning work.

I published my first collection of poetry, Split Rock / Cracked Cave, in 2013. I think I'm a much better, more confident writer today than I was then. As an independent writer and publisher, you have full ownership  and can revise as you will. So I made the decision to refresh some of the poems, make them better and repackage the collection as Bebop in the Small of Her Back, available here.

Read more here

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Quilting!