Ruth Beckett Quilts
  • Home
  • About Me
  • My Quilts
  • Contact

My Quilts - 2016 & 2017


Picture
Birds of a Feather
2016
The name of this quilt was inspired by the birds printed on the two fabrics: the darker fabric is full of crows and the lighter squares are full of love birds. I had a friend who worked very hard to piece strip her fabrics into her blocks and then cut them to size. I decided that was unnecessarily difficult and just machine appliquéd them onto the squares. I had so many strips left over that I used them in the border. Gifted to my good neighbor.

Picture
Memories are Made of This
​2016
​This crazy quilt was finished in 2016 but it took about 30 years for me to actually produce. I basted the crazy fabrics into the foundation fabric and then, whenever I took an embellishment class, I took one of the quilt block to practice on. Over the years, friends gave me bits of antique lace, buttons, ribbons and tatting which I just added to the quilt top. Souvenirs and badges showed up and were also applied. Leftover coins joined the design until each piece of of the quilt top had something sewn onto it and, then, I stopped.

Picture
Oriental Beauty
​2016
The Seattle Art Museum had an exhibition devoted to indigo, the plant used to dye fabric blue. The exhibit included textiles, plus historic and contemporary artifacts, produced by using the indigo dye. The gift shop sold a stack of glorious indigo-dyed fabric samples which, of course, I purchased. Combined with fabrics from a friend who has been experimenting with hand dying, I incorporated them all into this quilt. The quilt top has one printed bird design which I copied using sashiko stitches to form two more birds on the solid indigo fabric.
​40x42"  $500


Picture
Purple Splendor
​2016
This is another mandala quilt that began with my question, "What would happen if I cut eight wedges out of this busy plaid?" Suddenly, I created a Star! Then I went shopping for the perfect purple large print with sixteen repeats. I didn't quite make it so I alternated entire motifs with half motifs which I actually like better than my original plan.

Picture
Royal Diadem
​2016
​This inventive quilt design reminds me of looking down on an enlarged jeweled ring setting. I felt that the center worked but the birds weren't symmetrical so I added the yellow to partially cover the birds. Then, I added the red and green needle-turned appliqués to detract from the bright yellow insets. 

Picture
Seattle Spring
​2016
I wanted to create a quilt with my favorite Seattle spring colors. To set the color scheme for this quilt, I started with the middle secondary designs and the sixteen repeats on the second circle. The green circle is printed with flower stems so the row after that just had to be flowers. To achieve the right effect, I set the purple fabric into the seams in a way that they remain loose and three-dimensional. 

Picture
Sedona Spring
​2016
I signed up for a watercolor class in Sedona, Arizona with Road Scholar. Even though the class was canceled, I went anyway. There was a wonderful quilt shop in Sedona within easy walking distance from the Super 8 Motel where I was staying. All the fabric for this quilt came from the back room of the shop. The central needle-turned figure is enlarged from the rust colored background fabric. For the pieced center, I used the shop's charm pack. I ran out of horse stripes and the shopkeeper happily mailed me more to complete the mandala.
​52x52"  $700


Picture
Elephant Walk
I bought the fussy-cut elephants  from an African fabric booth at a quilt show years ago.The turquoise circles were cut from different repeats in the same Paula Nadelstern fabric. I cut the fuchsia fabric into squares and inserted them into the seams. I formed the curves by folding the bias of each triangle back onto itself and tacking it only to itself so that the curve stands out from the quilt and forms a shadow. I even had a few leftover elephants and I sewed them peeking around the label on the back. 

SOLD

Picture
Mikuna's Baby Quilt
My friends, Chris and Chuck, had a Japanese exchange student who lived with them years ago. When this young woman married and started her own family, they took this quilt as a gift for the new baby
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About Me
  • My Quilts
  • Contact