The Power Line
Flying above the earth, I see a rumpled quilt of colors, shape, and lines. Throwing a stone in a pond, I create concentric lines around a center point. I take out my hiking map, and find contour lines create a 2D record of shapes. These experiences become useful again when it is time to add lines of quilt stitching.
Traditional Hawaiian quilting uses outline stitching around flower and animal motifs. It adds a kind of vibration to the surface.
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Looking at Google Earth is something like viewing a huge quilt covering the earth. From about 25,000 feet, the Midwest shows that it was divided before it was settled. Sometimes the contour lines cross over the survey lines that divide one field from another. This small quilt is a study of crop circles in Western Kansas.
Some of this quilting is on cotton T-shirt fabric, which has a very sculptural quality. The closely-set quilt lines have become a texture, instead of a drawing.