A Look Back at 2024

2024 was a busy year of creating, teaching and traveling! I always think its a good idea to look back on the year to reflect on what I did well and enjoyed, and what I need to work on in the coming year.

I created 21 new quilts, including five large pieces, seven medium ones and nine small–ranging in size from 8″ x 8″ to “12 x 16”. I also made 4 other large pieces that are pieced but not quilted and finished. That’s about the same as past years, but I’d like to do more in 2025, especially large pieces. That total also doesn’t include six large quilt tops I made in classes with Nancy Crow but haven’t finished–some of them are just class studies and probably won’t get finished, at least anytime soon.

One of my favorite finishes was Beetlejuice, which I completed the day before I went down to the Virginia Quilt Museum to help hang my solo show, Abstractions in Color, that ran from January 9 – March 30.

I had 20 quilts on display in a variety of sizes, from large wall hangings to cozy 12″ squares.

In connection with the show, I taped a Textile Talk on January 16, sponsored by Studio Art Quilt Associates. I chatted with Alicia Thomas, executive director of the Virginia Quilt Museum about the show and the evolution of my work.

Over the year, I visited 22 guilds or groups online or in person for lectures and workshops, I taught three multiday events–the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in February, the Virginia Consortium of Quilters in April, and Woodland Ridge Retreat Center in August.

And I restarted my independent Zoom workshops–one session each of Improv Puzzle, Fabulous Freehand Curves, and a new class, Improv Scrapmania. These are such fun I’m going to continue them in 2025. Two are already on the website–Improv Puzzle at the end of January and Fabulous Freehand Curves in April and May. I expect to have two more later in the year. Each workshop is three 3 hour sessions and the sessions are recorded so if you have to miss one, you can easily catch up.

Below is a another favorite finish for 2024–Sunday Latte. I made it to demonstrate my new class, Improv Scrapmania. It’s a lot of fun to take leftover bits and scraps from other projects and put them together in an organic way–with no straight lines unless you want there to be!

In addition to traveling to teach, our family did a lot of traveling this year. My husband and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Galapagos in May and an epic backcountry hiking trip to Iceland in August. I wrote blog posts about both of those trips that you can read by clicking on the links. And I helped our son Phillip drive his car across the US from Virginia to California for a new job in July.

I developed three new classes this year–Abstracting from Art,  Improv Scrapmania, and Go Wild with Prints and Solids. They were a lot of fun and well received. I’ll be teaching Abstracting from Art as a 5 day workshop at a new retreat center, Estelle Center for the Creative Arts in picturesque La Veta, CO next July! If you’d like to know a little more about this class, I wrote a blog post about teaching it last March. You can see that there’s a lot of variety in the quilts that I’ve made using this concept, as well as that my students make from their own inspirations. I really enjoy helping each student bring their ideas to life!

Above is a photo from my class at Woodland Ridge showing some examples from my work and the inspiration for each one. From left, Alaska Dreaming was inspired by a photograph I took on a trip to one of the Alaska National Parks with my family. Improv Garden was inspired by a photo of the flowers at my son’s wedding. Abstract Flowers is my response to the pattern in a favorite sweater, Homage to Matisse reflects the energy of Henri Matisse’s cutout art and Supernova reflects the colors and energy from a volcanic eruption in the Galapagos.

I didn’t enter as many shows this year, partly because I had most of my new work tied up with the Quilt Museum show at the beginning of the year, and a big deal. I did have work in QuiltCon in February, two group shows at the Reston Gallery and Art Studios near my house, the biennial Fiber Options show in Annapolis, MD in August, the SAQA Invitational show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show in November, and an invitational show at Piedmont Arts in Martinsville, VA in December/January 2025. I also got quite a few rejections, which always stings a bit, but it happens to all of us!

I’m thrilled that Musings II was accepted for Quilt National ’25–it’s exciting to be part of that show again! Here’s a detail shot.

Quilt National opens Memorial Day weekend 2025.

Above is my Top Nine for 2024, as generated by an app to reflect the nine Instagram posts my followers liked the best. I’m always interested in this, but this year I was a little surprised by the results. Lots of likes for my tiny Improv piecing! In the top left is Lake Regatta, another piece I created for my Improv Scrapmania class, my Color Grid quilt appears twice–that one is alwasy a favorite and it hung in the SAQA Invitational in Philadelphia this year. A smaller version of that quilt, Color Sparkles, plus the blocks that I made for it are in the bottom left and the right center. My cat Jessie on a quilt is in the middle left (cats on quilts are always favorites), Baby Blues is in the bottom right, one of the quilts that found new homes this year, and two other Improv pieced quilts in the top right and center bottom.

Here are my top nine.

These are the pieces that I had the most fun with this year. Some tiny piecing in Chocolate Sprinkles (top left)  and Meadowlark (bottom center) –both 12″ square mounted on painted black canvas. Sunday Latte (middle left) and Potpourri (top center) are both part of the Improv Scrapmania series, the middle center and middle right are part of my Fabulous Freehand Curves series, Abstract Garden Party (upper right) and Balancing (lower left) are part of a series of quilts exploring large shapes and tension between the shapes and the space around them. Beetlejuice (lower right) could be considered part of that series as well.

I tried something new at the end of this year. This top is just finished and doesn’t have a name yet.

I’m co-teaching a class at Madeline Island School of the Arts in Wisconsin in September with Maria Shell and Susan Lapham called Piecing Perspectives – Medallion Madness. I haven’t really done many medallion style quilts because my design aesthetic is usually more asymmetrical, but I wanted to give it a try to see what would happen. I used a large Freehand Curve center and then added some of my favorite techniques–Improv blocks, curved stripes, more Improv curves, and Angled Stripes to finish the outer border. I’m pleased with the result and I’m going to make another one soon! There are still a few spaces left in the class if you’re interested in joining us.

For 2025 I have very general goals–I’m going to make more quilts, especially larger ones; teach four multiday events and four independent Zoom class sessions; develop at least one new class; keep entering shows, especially national ones; and work on creating the right balance between working, traveling, and being in my studio.

Thank you to all my readers, followers, students and collectors for a great 2024–I’m so grateful to all of you! I wish you all the best in 2025–joy, creativity, laughter, happiness and health–and I look forward to connecting with you in the new year. Happy New Year!