Pieced by
Kathy Cracroft Wilhelmsen
(Draper, Utah - 2022)

This is not the typical sweet, soft, or fun quilt. I see it as my “angry” quilt. Making it was a way to acknowledge sharp feelings, raw hurts, unwanted barriers, and festering frustrations in the personal fallout of this unending pandemic.

Also, while sewing this, I listened to Kristin Hannah’s novel The Four Winds. It is about Texas refugees during Dust Bowl years and the hardships, unfairness, and despair they experience as field hands in California. At one point, a barbed wire fence is erected to keep the workers from leaving their picking.

The bright spots of color that appear sporadically on the barbed points represent angry pricks of disappointment and worry. The colors on the back of the quilt also are symbolic of emotional stress. Even the “roses” of this pandemic haven’t come without thorns.

Pattern: “Arrowhead” in Turnabout Patchwork by Teresa Mairal Barreu. Blocks are quartered snowballs.

Quilted by
Eagle Mountain Quilting