Art Quilt: Cherry Type Pie

In my fabric stash I have extra poems and images leftover from previous quilts. In 2018, I made Almost Cherry Season and printed surplus copies of both the image, a reduction print of cherries, and the poem, which I had letterpress printed from handset metal type. Recently, after arranging the wood type letters P I E on the press, I printed and overprinted the words in piecrust brown, then let all sit to cool, various ideas for them still cooking.

The acrylic triangle templates I had just bought for the diamond-patterned quilt were the way in: pie wedges. And cutting the print in circles to break up the straight lines became the compositional answer.

The title? A little printer's joke. When type is "pied" it means it has all fallen over and jumbled.

Cherry Type Pie

19.5"w x 41.75"h (49.5 cm x 108.5 cm)

Letterpress printed from wood type, metal type, and a linoleum block on cotton; Japanese woven cotton; raw-edge appliqué on fused pieces; machine pieced; hand quilted

Details:

and the back:

Addendum, March 2026: This quilt was juried into the exhibit Americana Reimagined at Petaluma Arts Center; on view March 12 - April 18, 2026. See the website for more info.

My statement for the piece: Cherry trees appear in American history, first in a myth connected to George Washington, then as a symbol of Washington DC, planted in 1912, a gift from the City of Tokyo. This honors the migrant workers who pick cherries, grown in the western U.S., while the laws are jumbled, or pied, around us.