Studio Series: Tangents quilt

Tangents quilt ©Karen Thiessen 2012

Tangents quilt detail ©Karen Thiessen 2012

And now for something completely different from my usual textile work. Does this quilt look slightly familiar? It should – the header of this blog is a repeat pattern of it. A few years ago I had just finished a huge studio commitment and felt a little lost and restless. This is normal for me: I experienced this when I graduated from Sheridan, from NSCAD, and when I finished my Harbourfront residency. After my Sheridan and NSCAD graduations, I made quilt squares to pass the time while my brain figured things out. More than 300 squares later I knew what I needed to do, so I put them away. After Harbourfront, I decided to piece the squares into quilt tops thinking that I might get 5 large quilts out of the deal. Nope. I ended up with 15 bed-sized quilts and another 7 wall quilts. Given my tendency to stitch densely, I decided to hire local machine quilter Jacqueline Harris to machine quilt the quilts for me with patterns that I designed: loop-de-loop, wandering grid, wonky grid, and a plain grid. Jacqueline was great to work with – every few weeks she dropped off a batch of quilts and picked up a pile of quilt tops and backs. I decided to trim and bind them all myself, plus I added a few areas of hand-stitching.


In case you are wondering, Tangents is 52.5” wide X 69.5” long (133.5 cm X 176.5 cm).