"Sister Sister"/Machine Quilting Unlimited article

"Sister Sister"
41" x 50"

Months ago, I offered this quilt and it's story (as far as it went at that moment) to Eileen Doughty who was writing an article about group quilts.

Her article is in the most recent addition of "Machine Quilting Unlimited"!

Thank you, Eileen, for including us!

This quilt is a progressive quilt created by five members of my quilt group Gone to Pieces. On an irregular basis we have 2-3 progressive quilts in rotation at any one time.

I offered the central panel by Java batik artist Suryanto that I didn't want cut. Otherwise, whatever the person who wanted to tackle it next thought it needed was fine with me.

During the time it took to complete "Sisters", our group had come to the realization that we (as Vivika Denegre said) hadn't "gone to pieces"...that we were a very together group and we needed a new name.

Indeed we had morphed into a primarily art quilt group. We voted on several suggestions for our new name. Sisters in Cloth won. Even though it wasn't unanimous, the new name was accepted. The "Sister Sister" quilt worked as a symbol of the group and, for many of our early group exhibits, was displayed along with our other work.

When we started sending postcards and making posters announcing our work, the symbol became refined down to just the strip of "sisters" holding hands. We thought of it as our logo.

Until we started a blog! (http://sistersincloth.blogspot.com)

Now we are anxious about it. The strip of paper-pieced women was adapted from the work of others...some anonymous...quilters. We didn't want work that looked derivative.

We are at this moment creating a new, original to us, logo. I have to say, however, I will be sad to see that line of sisters disappear from our identity.