Last Sunday, in addition to visiting the Riverlands conservation area, which has already been blogged about, Anne and I also visited the National Great Rivers Museum (NGRM).  While the Riverlands is on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, the NGRM is located on the Illinois side and is found adjacent to the Melvin Price Locks and Dam in Alton.  We went to the Riverlands to see birds.  We went to the NGRM to see the Rambling River Project.  This post is about this quilting project.

The Rambling River Project is a 22-foot-long winding river created by 15 different fiber artists from across the state of Missouri.  Presenting at the NGRM exhibition were a few of the quilters.  Marsha Bray and Nancy Sinese are pictured with Anne above.  Each artist was asked to make a 18” by 22” quilt.  Blue fabric was provided for the river and guidelines were provided on how the river should enter end exit each quilt.  Each artist worked in secret, until last September, when all 15 quilts were unveiled.  Included with this exhibit were artist statements.  Here are a few:

#4 – Wendy Richards, Manchester, MO

One of my favorite things – kayaking at the full moon – is the inspiration for my section of the river.  Many different fabrics were used to show the starry night sky, white full moon, dark water and land.  I used invisible appliqué to sew the fabrics together and then used oil paint sticks to make the moon glow.  There are also a few beads as stars in the sky.  The white “moonshine” fabrics on the river are done with fusible appliqué.

#6 – Nancy Sinise, Creve Coeur, MO

After toying with two other ideas and beginning to get nervous about the deadline, my idea finally came as were landing in central England for a visit to see my daughter.  All the farm plots were outlined in some way and looked so different from home.  It was a fun viewpoint.  Techniques include fusing, gluing, couching string for roads and using netting for clouds.

#8 – Marsha Bray, Chesterfield, MO

My river panel was inspired by a recent experience rafting the Grand Canyon.  My husband and I spent 8 days on the Colorado River enjoying some of the most spectacular scenery ever.  Our time on the river included moments of placid floating alternating with heart-stopping, wave-crashing rapids.  I chose to use the diamond shapes cut from the river fabric to represent the placid surface which reveals underneath the rolling dark and turbulent true nature of the river.

Pictured below is my reconstruction of the Rambling River Project.  I handheld photographed each of the panels and then PhotoShopped them together.  This process led to some trimming around the edges, for which I apologize.  I could have shown each of the panels individually, either in slideshow or gallery modes, but elected to show them as the collected work that they were meant to be.  This choice burned through a significant portion of this blog’s free storage budget, so please click on the photo below and then blow it up to its full size.  I think that you like I, will enjoy this artwork.  Enjoy!

Anne’s sister Jay and all of Jay’s family are avid baseball fans.  Because they reside in Seattle, they are Mariner’s fans.  It is my sincere belief that most of any season’s Mariner home games have at least some of Jay’s family in attendance.  This last Christmas, Jay, et al, gifted us with the Seattle Mariner blanket pictured in the above photo’s background.  It was an attendance prize that was handed out at one of last season’s Mariner’s games.  It features a compass rose that is an integral part of the ball team’s logo.  Call it serendipity or call it The Gift of the Magi done right this time, but Anne had been working on a quilted compass rose, honoring the Mariners and more broadly Seattle’s maritime tradition.  After much work and rework it was delivered this week.  It is also pictured above.

I always love to slip a little history lesson in whenever I can and this seems as good an opportunity as any.  The preceding photograph is of a model of the tugboat, Martha Foss and was in the Missouri History Museum exhibit, Homelands, How Women Made the West, as does the following quoted text.

Thea Foss was a Norwegian immigrant and Puget Sound resident, in 1889 she scraped up five dollars to buy a neighbor’s rowboat, spruced it up and sold it at a profit.  She was soon purchasing and renting a fleet of rowboats, with the assistance of her husband Andrew.  From rowboats, they branched out into motorized launches and then tug boats.

Thea Foss was the founder of Foss Maritime, the largest tugboat company in the western United States.  She was the real-life person on which the fictional character “Tugboat Annie” was based.  The legend of Tugboat Annie began with a series of Saturday Evening Post stories.  These led to a series of movies and eventually to a TV series by the same name.  Martha Foss is a descendant.  Here is a clip from the 1933 movie, Tugboat Annie.  In this clip Annie is helping her son with his homework.  Somehow I find this appropriate.

I’ve added a link to my friend and former high school classmate, Cooper.  Coop’s blog is called Lefty Parent.  He lives in LA, where lo these many years ago Anne and I last saw him in the real world.  There is a whole blog post there, so I won’t go any further, except to say, that I should have added his site to my link list months ago, so check it out!