Duck Creek • quilt #302

I know you are really here to see the info on this beautiful mural. It’s by Rosy Cortez, and was done under her guidance by a team of helpers. (Links point to her Instagram page as well as to the website for the mural.) I really love that it’s three different ages/stages of women, honoring our local native tribes. I’ve been two of these ages, and am now in the third (hint: I’m not pregnant).

Sometimes the title of this mural, We Are Still Here, reminds me of all my quilter friends. We cut and piece and hang out in our sewing rooms, studios, basements, garages, spare bedrooms. Every once in a while we pop up with another quilt top finished, the binding on another, and still another in stages of quilting. Dedicated, we follow in the way of artists everywhere: we have the vision. We have to see it through.

Recently an article titled “The Art of the Steal,” discussed the number of original book plots possible. In 330 B.C. Aristotle thought there might be just two: “simple (change of fortune) and complex (in which the change of fortune is accompanied by setbacks and reversals)” (by Emily Eakin, link above should allow you to read the entire article). By 1892, Rudyard Kipling thought there were 69 plots. Between Kipling and our current day, the number fluctuated, and by 2004, Christopher Booker proclaimed there were just seven: “the quest, vanquishing the monster, rags to riches, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy and rebirth” (Eakin, ibid). Not to let the number lay there, another group used a computer in 2016, and proclaimed that the “world’s stories boiled down to ‘six basic shapes‘ (Eakin, ibid.)

So how many original quilts are there in our quilting world? Like the novelists, do we have just six basic shapes?

Two of these are triangles, the rectangle is just a stretched-out square, and the curved wedge is just a segment of a circle. We have rectangle triangles, skinnier triangles, ray-shaped triangles. You’ve used them, I’ve used them. Are we like novelists then? Taking a few basic shapes (boy meets girl, etc.) to make our quilts? I have a child who really likes triangles. Another of mine just likes big quilts, bypassing design altogether. Another likes red quilts, and the last child just wants them all (bless her).

I can satisfy all their requests, for sure. And like my children, some of us are attracted to medallion quilts (my hand is the air), others like samplers, and still others would be happy making intricately pieced quilts for the rest of their lives in a blissful sort of who-cares-about-shapes-let’s-throw-them-all-in-at-once attitude, and come out with spectacular pieces of art. The reality is we take, we borrow, we steal, we adapt, we climb on top of, we turn it around, and then make it ours. Here’s one of my recent favorites, from Linda Hungerford, of Flourishing Palms.

So the bottom line is for me, at least, I think there may be very few original quilt designs. No one gets to claim copyright on a triangle, or a circle; we all know that. But where our creativity comes in, and why we are still here, sewing machines humming, has to do with how we use those shapes, those fabrics, and how big we make it and how small we make it.

I have two copies of Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Shapes, and I also have her version of that for Appliqué. Sorry to say that I feel the same about appliqué: most of us are imitating the vines, swirls, flowers, stars and animals of the appliqué world that we’ve seen before. I have twice had famous quilters threaten me with a lawsuit because they believed I was making money off their designs (seriously?). One was well-known for pinching other people’s designs, too. I pulled that pattern, and have made it free for those who are interested, for who needs a lawsuit? The other quilt I never went far with, but I’ve seen variations of it. One last episode of being accused of plagiarism left me shaken, and I lost a good friend over it, even though the design was available freely online. I really hate run-ins with famous territorial quilters, as most of the time I’m just in my tiny world, doing my thing.

The Duck Creek quilt is made of Cat’s Cradle blocks, sashed with cornerstones and pieced rectangles, and it is the design of Lisa Alexander & Susan Ache, from their book Celebrate with Quilts. I saw this pattern at our Guild night, when Char brought her book to show a couple of us. I was hooked on this design, bought the book and went for it.

The subtitle of the Times’ article has the phrase “Copy that” as in, we get it. But sometimes we quilters seem to be the least able to “get it,” I think. I have seen some incredibly original and interesting quilts this last year, and yes, most all used the shapes above. But they are originals because of the way they used the shapes, colors, negative space and so on; maybe we don’t need to get so territorial about our shapes? We quilters can be “original” even when working with those basics, like Linda’s amazing Feelin’ Groovy.

Nobody can “copy that!”

Keep making, keep quilting, keep being here–and have fun at QuiltCon this week, everyone!

UPDATE: Some truly unique and original quilts were hanging this year at QuiltCon 2025. Here’s a post that will show them off. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.