Joyce Koskenmaki
"Lempi's Days."
30"h x30"w.
Materials: dyed and quilted cotton.
Movng and starting a new job set me back on this project, so I didn't start it until January...I had dyed the pieces much earlier, and painted the center. It's an image of my mother's kitchen in Butte, Montana, with the yellow mountain through the window: the "big M," named by Montana Tech mining students.
Doing this was a meditative process, influenced by my Buddhist practise, filled with memories of my mother, who died of cancer twelve years ago. She never worked outside of home, and her life centered around the kitchen. Her name was Lempi, an old Finnish name meaning "love" - so the title has layers of meaning: love's days, Butte kitchen, my mother's life.
I had not focussed on quilting for some time; my teaching responsibilities are drawing and painting. I do love quilting, embroidery, needlework, and it was nice to have an excuse to do the work. I loved transforming that ugly kitchen towel into something with feeling!
I started out with pages and pages of sketchbook/journal notes, a long process, before deciding on the image. Then it sat for months. Then I painted the center picture with procion dyes. Then I cut up the towel and dyed the pieces different colors. I added some other fabrics, mostly old, some from the linens which had been in my mother's buffet drawer. Trying to get the right feeling.
Then I sewed the pieces together randomly and started
making a border for the center picture. About that time I attached it all
to batting and backing and started hand quilting, appliqueing other pieces
on as needed. I could have gone on and on, but finally stopped when it
was time to send it off.
© 1999 Joyce Koskenmaki. 1100 Hill St, Hancock,
MI. 49930. 906-483-3183. jkoskenma@ccisd.k12.mi.us
Return to Dishtowel Artist List
Turtle Moon Studios
Susan Shie and James Acord
Contact us
| Home | | Classes
| | Gallery | | Green
Quilts | |Links |
| Resume | | Stuff
to Buy | |Turtle Trax Diary |
| Visit Jimmy's Leather Studio
Web site design © Susan Shie and Jan Cabral 1997. All subsequent web site work, ©Susan Shie 1997-2005.
This page updated by Susan Shie, January 30, 2005.
Web site hosting by Key to the Web, Ltd. ©2005.