This week The Undercover Quilters had the quilt reveal for our 2020 quilt book, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This very popular novel follows a young girl named Kya as she faces challenges living mostly on her own in the marshes of North Carolina. She is a born naturalist and so the book includes myriad references to the species she finds in the marsh. We all would highly recommend this book if you haven't read it yet!
We met on Martha’s open air porch, with physical distancing, for our reveal. I took photos of each member with their quilt, though only 7 of us attended. Hopefully, there are other quilts in the works with the members who couldn’t attend. Four of us had finished quilts to show. The rest of us are a bit late, but we have made good progress. We should have a nice exhibit ready to show next year with the hope that the pandemic will be behind us by next summer. Enjoy!
Martha Sanders (work in progress)
Suzanne Martin
“Kya’s Collection” by Jane Jensen-Davis
“Yet as soon as dawn crept between the trees, she felt a strong pull toward the feather, at least to look at it again. At sunrise she ran to the clearing, looked around carefully, then walked to the stump and lifted the feather. It was sleek, almost velvety. Back at the shack, she found a special place for it in the center of her collection—from tiny hummingbird feathers to large eagle tails—that winged across the wall.”
Erin Biskup (work in progress)
“Femme Fatale” by Cindy O’Neal
Susan Mondry- work in progress
“Through the woods toward the beach” by Betty Gientke. Betty wasn’t there, but sent this to us later.
My quilt- “Big Red”, in progress, pieced background, applique, (Big Red is a Herring Gull). I took my photo at home with my tripod.
My quilt was started several months ago when I cut and sewed a bunch of half square triangles. They were on the design wall for months and just last week I decided I needed to do something about them to get ready for the reveal. One problem was that one of the ocean colors was too dark, so I remade those blocks. Then I spent literally hours turning the blocks this way and that trying various combinations and patterns before I finally settled on this. I wanted to create the illusion of sky, ocean, sand.
The Marsh Girl, Kya, grows up mainly on her own in the marshes of North Carolina. She is unschooled, but a friend teaches her to read and then she teaches herself all about the nature of the marshes and ocean. She even comes to write her own identification guides to the marshes. We were so inspired by that and that’s why so many of these quilts include depictions of Kya’s natural collections.
The Herring Gulls in the marsh are befriended by Kya as her family abandons her. Big Red is the gull that Kya visits every day and greets with open arms. My quilt celebrates her relationship with these birds who are the ones to comfort her and even celebrate her birthday with her. I need to hand applique these shapes and add details to the gull, then I will hand quilt it.
Joey, 12 weeks old, just because!