On Sunday I attended a lovely memorial showing of the quilts of Peggy Timmons. Artist, writer, designer, teacher, friend, Peggy was 82 and died of a blood disease. In her career as a quiltmaker, which began in 1981, she made over 200 quilts, taught workshops, lectured for guilds and created many patterns. I have always loved Peggy's work and especially admire the way she adds tiny details to draw the viewer closer in to see the beauty of the quilt. Here are some pictures I took a the memorial showing some of the details on her quilts. Following these are a few people pictures.
Peggy could hand applique the tiniest pieces of anyone I know. This little cat is about the size of a nickel.
That cat is on the bottom corner of this four block quilt of trees in all seasons.
This is typical of her original designs, which were all hand appliqued, embroidered and embellished....
...and this is the little cat in the lower right corner. This one is about the size of a quarter.
The flowers are hand embroidered with sewing thread.
This pattern has a number of names, I am most familiar with the name Christmas Cactus. Peggy added the little yellow stamens which add a lot to the design.
Here is one of her more modern designs, machine pieced and with hand embellishments. There is a tiny red heart button on the point of the hand appliqued heart.
This is a lovely wedding quilt made for Peggy's daughter Linda and her husband. It is a very simple pieced background with signatures in the snowball blocks which are alternate with the nine-patches. The addition of the poppy bouquet makes it a knockout.
Like any good teacher, Peggy never stopped learning. She took a one day class with Freddy Moran and created this quilt, despite the dozens of house quilts she had made previously. This is a somewhat muted version of Freddy's style.
I don't know if this is one of Peggy's designs, but it is a wonderful, fun quilt that she made, putting her own "signature" on it.
Cute bunny on top of a basket of flowers.
And silly birds in the border.
One of her larger designs. Note that the appliques are all outlined in stem stitch using one strand of black embroidery floss. Peggy was the first person I ever saw using this technique which is now found in many quilts by many different quiltmakers.
If you can enlarge the image look closely at the flowers, many done with sewing thread, and see how she has used the background fabrics to her advantage. Tiny dots and printed flowers under the embroidered blooms help create the look of hundreds of flowers.
Here is another example of taking advantage of the background print.
Here she has used large flowers cut from a sunflower print and appliqued in the broidery perse technique. The little flowers in the foreground are circles of yellow fabric with straight stitches with sewing thread to hold them down. If you can enlarge, look at the many foreground flowers done with detached chain and (perhaps) a French knot in the center of each.
The DAX gallery in Costa Mesa is an art gallery, a lovely space with tall white walls and many floor to ceiling windows. The quilts were hung on the solid walls and also on moveable walls.
Here you can see more of the about 60 quilts that were hanging. Many of the people who came wore black - they didn't compete with the art on the walls!
Here are old friends from the early years of the Orange County Quilters Guild.
Juanita Swarts, Claudia Redfern and Nancy Ota.
Also from OCQG current membership were Pam Schoenbachler and Kathy Hall.
It was a lovely event, the only missing piece was Peggy herself. I wish she could have seen her work shown in such an elegant way.
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