This is one of my earliest quilts, made for my dear friend Barbara’s first grandchild. I wanted the quilt to give Emily a lot of power in her life, and I wanted it to be a blend of Chinese and American. And I wanted her to know that the world was hers for the taking.
The Chinese dragon with the ball that is the world is a very ancient motif, it’s rendition is totally my own.
I drew it out on freezer paper, then painfully hand appliqued it to the background, inserting prairie points as scales along the back and tail. I inserted seminole piecing as an inner border. I wanted the eyes to be intimidating, without scaring a sweet little girl.
The dragon itself is hand quilted, using a modified clamshell, which made great scales. The background is machine quilted, using long wavy vertical lines – it was one of my first forays into machine quilting.
World in Stitches 