2026 // 75 by 75 inches

Machine pieced, hand-tied

Marcia Derse cotton, wool batting, wool ties

Artist Statement

Australia’s aboriginal artists are mapmakers of their landscape and sacred spaces. Their style is defined by the multitude of small painted dots that cover the surface and lead the eye.

This piece started out as a way to use fabric that came from the stash of someone who’d died. Someone I hadn’t known, and yet through a friend, I ended up with these prints by artist Marcia Derse.. I take gifts seriously and wanted to use all the prints in one quilt. What emerged feels like a memory from the Dreamtime, of when I was very young eating summertime watermelon and drawing flowers.

I hand-tied the quilt with hot pink and bright yellow yarn — 625 knots in all. Like the aboriginal artworks that move me so, this quilt is a map of my earliest childhood.