“Texas Boy with Fish” (2018) • 32" x 24"
One of Carolyn’s iPad-designed quilts, it’s made with fused appliqué and won the Inspired
by Nature Award at the 2018 Form Not Function exhibit at the Carnegie Center for Art
& History.As Carolyn tried different fi lters,
one arrangement came up with
a black background and a red
fruit, and she thought, “I think I
can make a quilt out of that.” It
became her fi rst prize-winning quilt
designed via iPad. Another of her
iPad-infl uenced quilts, “Texas Boy
with Fish,” won the Inspired by
Nature Award at the 2018 Form Not
Function exhibit at the Carnegie
Center for Art & History.
The fused collage quilts in
Carolyn’s repertoire refl ect her
appetite for experimentation
and her love of puzzles. She has
explored fused collage design and
techniques through workshops
with quilt artist Sue Benner, and
loves the freedom fused appliqué
provides. “Working with fusible
allows you to reach a level of raw-
edge design you couldn’t otherwise
attain,” she says.
In a quilt like “Texas Boy with
Fish,” with its abstract style,
Carolyn’s affi nity for puzzles also
comes into play. “I’m a puzzle
solver,” she says, noting that she has
vivid childhood memories of sitting
on the fl oor with her dad, putting
together puzzles.
To make her large-scale fused
fabric “puzzles,” she turns to
technology again, fi rst blowing up
her design to full size in Photoshop.
Next, she takes a thumb drive to
a copy shop and prints the design
out in black and white. “Now,
essentially, I have a full-size pattern.
This helps me keep the pieces under
control.” From there, she cuts
the fused fabrics and pieces them
together to complete the picture,
stitching it all down.
Though she can’t resist
occasionally buying new fabrics,
Carolyn tries to keep her stash
under control by limiting must-
have purchases to fat quarters
or yardage that would make a
gorgeous backing. Otherwise, she
works with what she has as much as
possible. Her stash includes hand-
dyed shibori, commercial batiks,
fabrics with a strong representation
of solids, sari strips, and even a few
calicos from her early quilting days.
For her piece “Elba Isle
Hancock,” a portrait of her maternalgrandmother, Carolyn pulled all
but one piece of fabric from her
stash. She created the design from
an old family photo, scanned and
manipulated in her iPad. She played
with the scan until she found a crop
that spoke “quilt” to her and also fi t
the 2' x 6' dimensions for the Power
of Women exhibit at International
Quilt Festival, Houston in 2019.
The heavily stitched collage of
fabrics earned her a First Place and“Texas BTexas Boy with FishBoy wiithh FiFi hsh”” (2(2018) • 32(201018)8) • 332"2" x 2x 2424"4"