Jo-Anne Webster
"Kitchen Cover-Ups / Family Secrets."
43"h x 45"w.
Hand and Machine appliqué, hand and machine quilting, photo transfer, laminated photos, vintage fabric, linens and buttons, found objects.
When I accepted the invitation to participate in this project I was looking at a year of restfulness with no other large projects looming. I was so excited and started the thinking part immediately. Within 60 days I found that I was putting my house on the market and had to pack up my whole studio and make it back into a bedroom for selling purposes. Now what! Well, I thought, no problem, house will sell, I'll move and then I'll do the quilt. We all know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men...
Fast-forward to January 1, 1999. One New Year's Day I decided since the house had not sold, I must figure out some way to accomplish this task in the middle of my living room with everything being picked up totally by 8:00 AM every morning. Now understand that I am not a neat person by design, so this was an incredible obstacle.
I had the concept pretty well worked out by now. Since my Mom and Dad were not Ward and June Cleaver and there were many 'family secrets'. I didn't want to make this a depressing quilt so I decided to hide the secrets under aprons. That way you could choose to see the secrets or not. Over the course of the next few weeks the quilt started coming together very nicely. At one point my Mom gave me some old Life magazines from the 50's and I found the images in the ads perfect for the quilt. So with the help of the local Kinko Copy Center I was well on my way. As part of the packing-up my house project, I found lots of old photos that were also just perfect for the quilt. I decided not to transfer them to fabric, but instead to laminate them and 'tie them on'. As I sorted through my massive amount of stuff I found all sorts of trinkets and do-dads from that era and was thrilled when it all came together so well. As I was finishing off the quilt I couldn't resist putting the red piping on it, since all the clothes my mother made for us either had piping or rick-rack...a sign of the times, I guess.
Elements of interest: The pictures are all actual family
members including my maternal grandparents as they arrived from Sweden,
one maternal aunt and one paternal aunt, my parents and my two sisters...and
of course me. The red buttons surrounding me in the lower left are my 'wall
of protection". The purple flowers on the 'Mom's Kitchen' sign are
actually earrings my mother made and wore. The girl scout patches, although
not actually mine, are the same as ones I earned. The fabric on two of
the aprons is actually from aprons my mom wore (she was always in an apron).
The background blue with roses fabric was my bedroom curtains. The coffee
pot and cup are significant because I began to drink coffee in a baby bottle
as do so many Scandinavian children...and they wonder why we were hyper!.
© 1999 Jo-Anne Webster. 235 N. Main St, West Hartford,
CT. 06107. 860-232-4998. Jwebs235@aol.com
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