Ground Zero

by Lois Jarvis
(Madison, WI)

This quilt has 621 faces of the 2,400 people who died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, printed on fabric. Below is my artist statement. To see detailed pictures please go to:

www.LoisJarvisQuilts.com

I am not as eloquent with words as some people are. And why I needed to make this quilt I could not say. I do not personally know anyone who perished that day. I don't plan to sell this quilt.

So why I made it is a mystery to me.

All I can say is that I felt I should do it because I knew I could to do it. Now that it is done I am finding the answer to why I felt the strong urge to make it.

I made it to be viewed by other people, and to somehow touch them. I hope it will remind everyone that the loss of the buildings and their material content was not the important event that day.

I hope it will show the viewer that the individual people on this quilt, the happy smiling people at work and at play, the brides and grooms, the fathers and mothers, the young so full of promise and the old with so much still to offer, who all perished that day, are the important things to remember.

I created this work of art using traditional quilting techniques. The Lone Star pattern was used because I could manipulate it into looking like an explosion with outward movement. The inner border is meant to contain the blast. The outer border in shades of gray captures the colors of those days following September 11...the smoke, the dust, the sadness, the colors of a city in mourning.

The quilting in the seam line along each side of the small diamonds making up the Lone Star skips the inner border and continues into the outer border. This creates the effect of a chain link fence providing a place for viewers to express their reactions to this event.

The images of the people on this quilt were downloaded from the CNN site starting just a few days after September 11. Over 1,000 pictures were downloaded. About 800 were printed. Just over 600 were used in this quilt. They were printed on PFD (prepared for dyeing) cloth treated with Bubble Set 2000 on a Cannon 600 printer.

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If you enjoyed this quilt, please do let the quilter know by posting your comments. And if you've got one to share, don't be shy, we'd love to see it!

This article was printed from Generations-Quilt-Patterns.com