Process and Exhibit: Rainbow Roll, 2022

My quilt, Rainbow Roll was juried into the upcoming show, Hers, His, Theirs, Ours: Queer Expression! a collection of work celebrating gay pride by the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. This quilt is a tribute to all blends. 

When I make a quilt, I take photos at various stages along the way, which helps me see the overall composition better, a step farther back. I often adjust a piece based on how it is looking on a smaller scale. The photos also serve as a record of when I started and how the project progressed. The organizers suggested the artists give links to their processes, so I dug up the process photos and am presenting the behind-the-scenes look here.

After having created three quilts to enter in the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) regional show, Prism Play, I had many small pieces left over. One of my pieces, The Hidden Coot, was juried into that show, and when I visited the exhibition I was inspired by the rainbow effect and decided to create one of my own. "Rainbow roll" is what printmakers call the technique of applying different colors of ink to either ends of a large roller and letting them mix and blend together; as a printmaker, this idea of the rainbow quilt appealed to me. Not only as a visual look, but also a connection to one another.

Hers, His, Theirs, Ours: Queer Expression will be showing at Pajaro Valley Arts in Watsonville, CA (near Santa Cruz), from May 28 through July 13, 2025. It was juried by Melissa West & Jorge Guillen, a.k.a. Xinistra Gl'Amour. 

Rainbow Roll

21"w x 83"h

(above photo by Lia Roozendaal)

A closer look at each finished section is in this post.

I began by pulling out all my scraps and organizing them by color. Purple was first. I laid them out on a piece of batting so they would stick and wouldn't move around.

I kept moving them around until I found a look I liked.

This was it. Next color.

Reds and pinks.

I stitched the purples together and trimmed the edges.

Then I stitched the reds. I placed the purple and red next to each other.

The project proceeded much the same way: moving scraps around, stitching, trimming to size. 

Purple, dark red, red, red-orange. Orange and golden yellow in the foreground.

I hung them up to take a look.

A black border made the colors glow.

Except I had the two yellows in the wrong order! Oh, no!

The golden yellow should have been next to the orange.

Luckily, that could be fixed.

I had to cut them apart and re-stitch.

Much better blend.

Now to pin it all to the batting and backing. 

Trim, stitch it up, then bind the edges. I used metallic gold thread for the quilting on the rainbow, black for the border.

A closer look:

Voila!

It should be a lively show!