Counting Clouds

Artist Statement

Each night, the kids and I count clouds. The clouds float from our house all the way out beyond the milky way. Sometimes, in the dark, they ask me questions that are hard to answer. I share what I can, what I know, my limited experience. But sometimes my throat closes up and it’s hard to explain things I can’t understand myself. But every night we count the clouds, and I become as calm or calmer than them.

It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve completed a large quilt, and this one came together very organically. I pulled scraps from my solid fabric collection, and improvisationally machine pieced lots and lots of clouds, with nearly every seam a curve.

Then I hand appliqued the clouds to the background, piecing it as I went along. I had pieced a specific number of clouds per color, but as the composition developed, I chose to edit some of them out, which is something I really wish I’d done with a previous work on a similar theme.

The first round of quilting was a simple spiral between the clouds, but it didn’t feel like enough. Dan had the idea to make the clouds puffy, but by that point I had already progressed beyond the point of wanting to do trapunto (though that would have been SO cool!!). So a friend suggested that quilting around each cloud might give it some dimension, and that was quilting round 2. The final quilting touches were improvisational squiggly lines in the lighter areas and hand-tied “stars” in the darker areas.

I loved the process of making this piece, and am also so glad it’s finished!! I love the feeling of satisfaction when a quilt is complete.