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Starting a Portfolio

Published December 2, 2025

After five years of quilting, I have started to lose track of all of my projects that I’ve made. As I have gained confidence in my quilting skills, I’ve slowed the process of documenting my work.

I wanted to create this space to reflect back on all that I have made. I will be adding images of as many works as I have pictures of to note what inspired each piece and where it went.

I started sewing again in 2020, during the pandemic. In my working memory, I have always known how to use a sewing machine. My mom taught me at a very early age. She used to make me shirts to match her nursing scrubs as early as 3 years old. I was always delighted by the fun fabrics she brought home. I learned to sew in order to make Halloween and Renaissance festival costumes, always a great joy to turn fabrics into clothes that let me live a fantasy. It was always a family adventure, but usually only once or twice a year as a family project with my mom. I guess I took my knowledge of sewing for granted.

During the pandemic, I pulled my sewing machine out of the closet because we couldn’t buy masks. I took old sheets and hair ties, and I turned them into masks.

My first masks made from old sheets and hair ties
Eventually, I got fancy. I made these masks for my sister’s wedding to match our outfits.

Then in 2021, I decided I wanted to learn to quilt. I grew up in Hamilton, Missouri. It’s a small town that is now known as Quilt Town USA. As I was growing up, it was a desolate place. There was our school, subway, a gas station, and not much else. The entire downtown area was filled with abandoned storefronts with busted-out windows. Around the time I went to college, Missouri Star Quilt Company started buying up the buildings and turning them into quilt shops. They fixed up the old buildings, restoring them. Then, they built a distribution center. Now, the whole town is filled with quilt shops, and it’s a tourist spot for quilters. My mom picked up quilting, and I longed to share a hobby with her. I wanted to reconnect with her like we used to when we would make Halloween costumes.

April 2021:

I made these little pinafores for my niece around easter time. My mother had purchased the fabric several years before and had this pattern already picked out for them. I just made it happen. My niece used them as aprons for doing crafts.

June 2021

This is my first quilt ever. It’s a jelly roll quilt that I made using fabrics from my mom’s basement, and I found the pattern in a Missouri Star magazine. I bought cheap polyester batting from Walmart and tried to teach myself free-motion machine quilting. It was an ambitious project!

June 2021

This is a baby quilt that I made for my niece. I believe this was still cheap polyester batting. Here, I experimented with raw-edge appliqué. The pattern is Bohemian Garden by Suzy Quilts. I do not remember the fabrics, except that the marble-colored one is from Tula Pink. I did not understand the difference between 108″ and standard 43″ fabrics, so I bought WAY too much. Good thing; I love this fabric.

July 2021

This is another baby quilt that I made for my new niece. I made it from a panel I bought on sale at Missouri Star while I was visiting my mom. For this project, I was also learning how to do free-motion machine quilting. I loved having my mom’s Husqvarna with a stitch regulator. I never could have done this on my own machine. I thought I was really clever hiding the Illuminati symbol in there as a joke. I was a little disappointed to find out that I put the backing fabric (Little Mermaid themed) on upside down.

September 2021

I decided to make my sister a matching diaper bag after I saw a sample bag in the local quilt shop while visiting my mom. Crossroads Quilt Shop, I believe, is now closed. I bought a paper pattern of the older version of Ultimate Travel Bag 2.0. Wow! This was a tough project! I think the new version of the pattern deals better with all of the layers, but this bag has layers and layers of foam and strapping that are a menace to any machine. I made it on my 1948 featherweight.

In this project, I learned the cool trick of covering your strapping with fabric. I also learned about bias binding.

October 2021

In October, I participated in my first swap on r/quiltingblockswap. This pattern is called urban chickens. I made this quilt for my best friend, who has affectionately earned the name Bromie Bear. In the swap, I was assigned to make all purple blocks and mail them to the 12 members of my group. Then, I received their colored blocks. I was so happy with the camaraderie of this Reddit group. My group even decided to send extra strips of fabric to use on the rest of the quilt. I used those to border the silly panel on the front side of the quilt.

In this swap, I met several friends with whom I still text or message on Discord.

In this quilt, I wanted to learn to make prairie points! I have an old quilt made by my brother’s grandma, Amy, in the 1950s, and she used prairie points all around the edge. This inspired me to want to do the same.

November 2021

Laden with Zoom meetings, I was sewing a lot in November. I made this Thanksgiving table runner in just two days. I used the Turkey Trot video from Missouri Star to make the Dresden plate turkeys. My mom sent me this charm pack in the mail. It was by Windam Fabrics. Around this time, I started meeting up with a group of older retired gals on Fridays for quilting and tea. I got the orange and brown fabrics from one of the ladies’ stashes.

In this project, I learned how to make a Dresden plate. I also enjoyed doing matchstick quilting for the first time. Sadly, I no longer have this table runner. In 2023, I used it to wrap up a casserole dish for one of my husband’s work parties, and I accidentally left it at the host’s house. I was too intimidated to reach out the the lady who hosted the party, so I left it. I hope she enjoys it.

I made this adorable lunch box for my father-in-law. Inspired by his love of Mexican food and his very large moustache, I enjoyed personalising the fabrics. I got the moustache fabric from my friend, Gale, who hosted a quilting and tea event every friday. I am so sad we no longer have Alexander Henry fabrics. The pattern (as you see in the photos) was Grab Some Grub 2.0.

This was my first time using stretchy mesh. I really appreciated how this pattern fixed some of the issues I had with the layers in the older By Annie pattern. I did put the clip on wonky. Looking back now, I wish I had taken the time to seam rip and centre it.

Finally, I made this batik quilt for my friend, Kristen, as a birthday gift. She is such a quirky delight of a person, and I wanted to make something as bright and happy as her personality. I got this charm pack from my mom in the mail.

December 2021

In December, I decided to make some stockings from my scraps. The lining from the stockings was an old chair cover that my neighbour, Cheryl (who got the first quilt), gave me. In this project, I learned to penny piece. We still use these stockings. In fact, they are hanging right now!

I consider this bag, which I made for my mother-in-law, a failure. I hated the color combinations. The edges of the bag sank in. Oh well! I still gave it to her for Christmas.

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Solistagia in Santa RitaLa Pieta at St. Anthony's Catholic Church

Solistagia in Santa Rita

Published September 7, 2018

 

We stood silently in the Capilla, the weight of generations of prayers layered on one another pressed down on our shoulders. Jesus stared through us. Three hundred votives flickered in the darkness of the hand-placed stones that built up the walls, and prayers written on notebook paper stuffed the fissures of the hidden fortress, and picture of young boy printed from a laser printer and the blue ink scratched, “Do not remove until June 2007.”

 

Overhead, we heard the bulldozers pushing mounds of earth precariously across the 45-degree angled surface of Hanover Mountain. A crane planted itself firmly at the top, some 80-feet lower now than where the 10-foot wooden cross once stood. It hauled the marrow of the earth up over the hill and into the unknown. Fierro was once a lively mining town. Now it is a name on a map along an unmarked road marred by the decaying remains of homes. The only building preserved against dry rot is El Sancuario de la Pieta at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. People still travel twice per month to attend mass at St. Anthony’s. We had arrived right in time for the ceremony, but the doors were locked and the only chorus to be heard rumbled from the stomach of the mine–the mountain shaved to its core.

 

“There is no church this Sunday,” Zakery said, “They’re moving the mountain.”

This newest eviction in the long line of environmental injustices in the Grant County mining district. The mine that swallowed the town of Santa Rita as its pit expanded was about to engorge the memorial shrine of Fierro too.

The Shrine of Santa Rita sits tucked in a battlefield of dying towns at the intersection of New Mexico highways 152 and 356. In exchange for their loss, the residents of Santa Clara were gifted a 900-square foot lot to fence in their refugee relics: Our Lady of Guadalupe stands in here a terrarium holding a rosary and overlooking a memorial to Grant County Veterans. She herself stands as a memorial praying for the Santa Rita refugees whose lives and homes destroyed. Across the pews, looking south toward exposed rainbow earth, a plaque reads:

In 1960, Kennecott Copper Corporation notified the residents of the town of Santa Rita that they had to evacuate by 1970 due to mining expansion, all houses, buildings, and the Santa Rita Catholic church were either moved or demolished. The Statue of Santa Rita was taken the village of central Miguel Ojinaga. Angel Alvarado and Moy Gonzales asked Kennecott for a section of land, and the statue was brought back with the blessing of the diocesan of El Paso and with the help of other Santa Rita residents. The shrine was built here.

 

The plaque speaks in half-truths about the devastations of the people, as though the plot of land smaller than the average backyard is a gift. The residents of Santa Rita did not evacuate, an optional migration in the event of natural disaster, they were evicted by their Land Lord. As the earth literally fell out from under their feet took, not only where they lived but where they went for spiritual rejuvenation, citizens of Santa Rita were left with nothing. They waited and watched the physical destruction of their town, only to see a symbol of their faith carried off in the process. Our Lady of Guadalupe, a cultural symbol for the Mexicano people sought refuge in El Paso waiting out her trial for permission to return. Now, she mourns over all of the lives lost in Grant County. The physical lives of veterans and the envision of life as it once was. Soon there would be a new memorial statue to honor the 890 women’s auxiliary who put their lives on the line in 1950 to fight for fair working conditions in the same mine. The Santa Rita shrine is a catch-all sanctuary because it is the untouched slice of a “home” they used to know. It is a cultural artifact of the little bit they could salvage.

The Santa Rita Shrine

As Glenn Albrecht explains in “Solastalgia: A New Concept in Health and Identity” the citizens of Santa Rita grieved as they watched their lands being stripped away. They felt a “relationship between the psychic identity and their home. What these people lacked was the solace of comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’.” The destruction of one’s land is the devastation of one’s identity, especially in a mining town where the earth is tied to their culture. The people call themselves the Salt of the Earth, both in reference to their humble nature and their inseparable identity from the ground that provides for them. The paradox of mining is knowing that you make your money exploiting the same resources you depend on for sustenance. Although the company houses did not belong to the people of Santa Rita, the land always did. When the company asserted its power to repossess all of the lands, they left families defenseless–homesick, mourning.

 

Much like Albrecht notes, “their place-based distress was also connected to a sense of powerlessness and a sense that environmental injustice was being on home.” They watched pit expand to consume their geographic homes, and their vision of home was destroyed as they realize how little power they had over anything. This grief is intensified knowing the Santa Rita citizens where the ones both assaulting and assaulted. They dugs the pit during the day and came home the sleep in houses they would sweep away. They understood that their paychecks would cost the people of Santa Rita their lives as they knew it.

 

Now Santa Rita is a whisper behind a chain-linked fence, and Fierro is dwindling as the pit runs dry. The only hope of saving the central mining district is mountain-top removal.

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