My Year in Quilts 2021

Despite the pandemic it was a busy year. Or was it busy because of the pandemic? I noticed that I worked a lot on commissioned quilts. Good, I made some money so I could travel when it is possible again. I also made few my friends happy, turning old crafts into wall hangings aca memory quilts. As every year, I am going to reflect on my year in quilts 2021.

Let’s see, I didn’t make many art quilts, but here they are:

I revisited one of my Water quilts, that was based on the photo, taken by my late friend Rita. I didn’t plan to make a diptych but I did:

In summer I dyed bunch of fabrics in certain two colored way. That gave me an idea of these quilts that I call Color play:

The same technique used for the other quilts as well. Inferno:

And even for the small quilt that I made for SAQA Trunk Show:

Commissioned quilt, a replica of my quilt Autumn in Latvia, was a good way for using up multiple scraps:

My largest project was a bed quilt for my son. It was very large and took me about two months to make. My son wanted something extraordinary for his modern home so here it is:

The story of each quilt is told in my blog posts throughout the year.

SAQA

SAQA Europe and Middle East region came up with a wonderful idea of creating a series of quilts that would tell a story of Orient Express. I participated in a project and made a panel Venice Simplon Orient Express. This branch of trains, traveling to Venice, had a lamps with pink shades made from cloth:

For SAQA Benefit auction I made a small Symphony of Water (12″x12″), and to pleasant surprise, it was sold on the first day of the auction for $1000:

Reflections on the past

It looked like echoes from the past reached me when couple of customers asked me to make letter quilts. I thought that I can start a line of monogram quilts. First I made a larger Letter S quilt:

The other project was to make Letter B to accompany previously made Letter A. I made Letter B in coordinating colors and holding hands with Letter A:

Finally I made my own monogram 24″x24″:

There were also small and large quilts that didn’t fall in any of these categories, but I truly enjoyed making them:

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Linen quilts

For the Fifteen by Fifteen challenge we decided to create a series of quilts which will all be based on the country of each member’s choosing. I chose my native country Lithuania and made a promise to make all six quilts using Lithuanian linen fabrics. That was a double challenge for me! The topics were country’s emblems, landscape, artist, architecture, literature and flora/ fauna. All six quilts are here:

I am still keeping my focus on Lithuanian linen fabrics. One idea is to give new life to old textiles and crafts that in Lithuania usually were made from linen. Women weaved towels and table cloths, women embroidered and crocheted using unbleached and bleached linen yarn. You can read an amazing story of my wall hanging Pansies in Baskets, and again, here is the quilt 39″x28″:

Recently I finished another linen memory quilt Egle the Queen of Serpents. Don’t the crochet pieces in the stars look like queen’s crowns?:

I made 39 quilts totally, but others don’t deserve your attention and time. Thank you for reading!