Quilt from TCQC 01-04-09

"Order and Chaos" Sherry Boram 2003 16.5W X 23.5L

Shown as part of QuiltArt@10 exhibit at Houston 2005

This is a quilt I purchased from the "My World in Black and White", but a few years after the exhibit. I liked it when it was hanging in the exhibit and kept coming across it on my photo files. Finally, I contacted Sherry and asked if it was still available. "Yes," she said. "The check is in the mail," I replied. I think the tale of how she made this quilt enhanced my interest. Sherry and her husband are 'snowbirds', their home is in Indiana, but they also spend winters in Arizona and and summers in the Blue Ridge area of SW Virginia. She was in Virginia when she decided to make this quilt for the exhibit and she had very few supplies. She did have white PFD fabric and black Setacolor, so she painted, wet on wet, in stripes on the fabric She went shopping at a local store to find embellishments - the shining squares were cut from holographic school folders and beads came from a bracelet. The top third is quilted with vertical and horizontal lines, very close together with the tiniest black matte beads between vertical lines across the top. These are followed by five sets of three fat black beads sewn vertically and then five squares cut from the notebook cover and bound in black cotton. The bottom two thirds of the piece are quilted in vertical waves of stitching and then embellished with lovely square beads in several colors, decreasing in number toward the bottom. She says, "..the top is orderly, the bottom less so. This relates to the chronology of my entire life as well as how my daily life goes. Order is necessary, but Chaos is sometimes a lot more fun."
Sherry has excellent technical skills and her 'artists' eye has divided the space well. It is quite a nice quilt and I am proud to have it in the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection.