DC Modern Quilt Guild Presents
One Square Mile
See the show in-person
February 18 - March 4, 2023 • Arts Herndon • 750 Center Street, Herndon, VA 20170
My Home is my Haven
Kim Kellman
23x23
I love the simple shape of a house. I broke the house shape into blocks to be able to add alphabet blocks so the house has a message. I made the inside of the house in warm, inviting colors and I made the outside of the house in grey, murky colors. Throughout the quarantine, I’ve felt safe at home when everything outside felt less safe.
Maxwell Alley
Julia Triman
17x17
Maxwell Alley is a pedestrian route running north-south through the city of Frederick, Maryland. I’ve walked this route many times, and while I discover something new each time, I’ve also come to know many little details along the way: the chartreuse garage wall that ivy grows on seasonally, the yard full of lawn mowers, the rainbow painted fence around the dumpster. These sightings and several others appear on my map quilt of Maxwell Alley, a visual representation of my love of the tiny details of this particular route and other destinations it takes me to (chief among them the library and quilt shop!), of the rhythm and flow of walking, and most especially of this small city I call home.
Arteries Home
Dolores Goodson
16.5" x 16.5"
This mini represents the 'One Square Mile' of our hearts...the roads we walk all the time and even more since the Pandemic....the roads that lead Home. Living here over 36 years we appreciate our 'neck of the woods' now even more! Home is our Heart.
My Grosvenor One Mile
Eleanor Balaban
27x32 | Quilted by Debra Munk
This quilt was designed around the Grosvenor Condominium buildings in Rockville. We are easily identified along Rockville Pike with our blue balconies. I took pictures of lots of the balconies and the lakes between the buildings and put them in an improvisational design as I recently learned in a class.
My Square Mile
Aynex Mercado
16" x 16"
The most distinct feature of Frederick, MD is its church spires. No matter where you look, they are always present.
Inward
Nancy Hadley
25.5" x 25.5"
In memoriam Kerry Lyon 1953-2022. Over the past two years, my world kept getting smaller. First there was the pandemic, and suddenly no more going out to dinner or live music, but my husband and I still enjoyed hiking and biking. As he developed heart problems in 2021, hiking changed to long walks around the neighborhood, then shorter walks, then rarely leaving the house. For a month my world was no larger than his hospital room, then Kerry passed away and our 38 years together shrank to nothing but a landscape of memory.
Inward is log cabin construction with trapezoidal logs making the inward spiral. Warm and cool colors make the traditional diagonal emphasis of log cabin designs. Getting it started from the wonky center was the hardest part of creating the design. At the center is a Jerry Garcia memorial patch, because my husband was a Grateful Dead fan. The wildly varying fabrics represent the intense emotional chaos I felt as our world became narrower. I pieced it using foundation paper (36" wide roll of architectural tracing paper). Machine quilting defines the edge of each concentric not-quite-square, with traditional hand quilting halfway between the squares to get texture without a strong stitching line.
My Park
Lynne Mackay-Atha
19" x 20"
This is a snapshot of the park behind my home. It isn't really my park as it belongs to the community, but I think of it as mine. I see it when I get up in the morning and until it gets dark. The view of it changes through the seasons and it has changed through the years. I am out there for at least a few minutes most days and appreciate the time I spend walking, watching wildlife, and sitting and enjoying being out there.
Walks with Maisie
Anne Hines
38" square
At the end of 2019 we brought our new puppy Maisie home. When the pandemic started she was just beginning to go on walks, and so walking Maisie became the daily routine that we left out house twice per day to do when everything else was shut down. This is a map of the routes that we walk her. I added a stick figure Maisie in the style that my 5 year old daughter draws her.
Rock Creek Park
Janine Boyce
16 x 16
I am fortunate to live near Rock Creek Park in Montgomery County and have spent many hours there before, during and after the pandemic. This is my attempt to capture the quiet beauty of the park.
Everyday
Rolando Gumler
40" x 40"
The patterns used remind me of some of the activities I do around my house. You will see some lines that resemble the souls of my tennis shoes for tennis. The balls my dog and I use everyday. Also, some patterns resemble trees and nature which is all around me.
Screen printed fabric by Alyssa Salomon
Four Thousand Weeks
Gretchen Carder
22x22
If I live until I'm 80, I will have lived 4,000 weeks. That's it. And, of course, I am absolutely not guaranteed any amount of weeks whatsoever.
This quilt was inspired by the book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman. I've read it twice over the course of these past 2 years and it has influenced how I spend my time and how I feel about it (even the phrase "spend time" is problematic).
This book has motivated me to take a Sunday sabbath, guilt free. It has given me permission to unplug at the end of each day. It has tempered my expectations of myself and the nagging feeling that I am not doing enough. It has shaped the way that I view my time and my productivity in ways that feel incredibly relevant to the here and now. My relationship to my time is a work-in-progress, but I am learning, one week at a time.
The stripes in the background are roughly the number of weeks that the worst of pandemic lasted. The black letters are needle-turn appliqué and the background is machine quilted.
Bridges and Boundaries
Julia Carey
16 x 16.5
I created this quilt out of a variety of fabrics, ranging from a sky made from my mom's old pj's to door prizes from the June DCMQG meeting. I was inspired by the neighborhood I've spent my whole life in! There are three rows to the mini quilt. The first row represents the stream and bike trails in my neighborhood. I appliqued a line of rocks across the stream to represent the "bridges" my friends and I used to make, and I embroidered a block to create the DC boundary stone. The second row represents my house and backyard. The pile of books is inspired by the nearby independent bookstore we visit. The third row shows the metro station next to my house and represents the traffic and fast pace of life nearby.
Last July in Janelia
Hannah Haberkern
26.5 x 26.5
The top was pieced during a daily practice class with Heidi Parkes. I used to daily prompts to reflect on the place that has been home and workplace for me for most of my nine years in Virginia (Janelia). The result is a mental map rather than a topological one. It depicts paths I take during a typical day, my glasses that rest on my nightstand each night, the swipe care I need to get into the lab, my desk and bits of fabric that I dyed with turmeric and flowers growing on the campus grounds. With my quilting, I wanted to make a reference to a more typical map, imitating contour lines and grids. As I'm preparing to move back to Europe, making this quilt has been a great opportunity to reflect on a home away from home and what it has offered me.