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The Making of Tar & Cinders

When I made #theglaciertwo I felt a little disconnected from it. Honestly, I did not grow up in Colorado but in a small mid-west farm community. I decided that I was going to make a map quilt of my childhood town.

Most small farm towns in the mid-west are based around a North-South road and an East-West road. I made the main grid from Essex Linen metallic fabric that was the perfect representation of the tar and chip roads sprinkled with cinders to avoid ice slippage in the winter.

The colors represent the neighborhood blocks as I remembered them in my head; size and proportion. I cut them all without rulers and pieced them improv. To quilt this, I started with a 1 inch grid in a multitude of colors (20+ Sulky Cotton + Steel threads). After I finished the machine quilting I projected the actual map of my childhood town over top of the improv map. I then hand quilted the streets with Finca black perle 8.