I had a huge mess where I store a lot of my quilts. These are my non-art quilts which consist of my various holiday quilts, my quilts for teaching examples and other quilts I love and have been making since the early 90s. I found these three wall hangings that were from Doreen Speckman's first book and I had a bit of nostalgia. Doreen Speckman was from Madison WI and traveled the world teaching quilting. She was very gregarious, full of laughter and famous for her Peaky and Spike combination of triangles pieced together to get an elongated triangle. I was living in Appleton WI and was a member of the Darting Needles Quilt Guild and a new quilter and Doreen Speckman was the guest speaker. I was extremely influenced by her work-I bought her book and thru the mid to late 90s made a ton of these quilts and gave plenty more as gifts. I loved Doreen's humor and she indirectly gave me permission to combine prints, polka dots and stripes which I wanted to do but had not seen yet. I was able to take two classes from her and she autographed her second book for me! Doreen passed away when she was only 50 years old in 1999 and myself and the quilting work felt her loss. So finding these memories of her were special.
The first photo is called Scrap Lilies and my label says 1995. I actually hand embellished tiny seed beads to the quilt! I had hand quilted all three of these quilts-thank goodness I quit doing that! I also mitered the corners of the borders and who does that anymore!!
This second photo is a layout I make a gazillion times and we used templates-oh how times have changed!! I still use this little quilt as a table topper at Christmas and still adorn it!
This is the same quilt but in more "Laurie" colors-I was finding my groove! I still tend to pick lots of polka dots and black with brights. My technical stuff is pretty sad on these quilts-bad bindings and the corners aren't straight but you have to start somewhere!
I am glad I put labels on these because they are 18-19 years old and it seems like yesterday I made these. RIP Doreen!!
When Doreen Speckman passed away, an auction was held in Madison. i bought about 10 yards of fabric and they have been my favorites. She certainly had an eye for interesting prints.
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