From the artist: "At the time the disastrous October 1991 East Bay fire occurred I was working on a simple stripe quilt cut from Japanese tosan fabrics in my collection. The fabrics were pinned to my design wall in an overall zig-zag pattern, and I was contemplating possible fabrics to use for the fill-in diamonds which would complete the quilt top. The project was lacking "soul" and I was frustrated.

In the middle of the night I realized that I had a color run of hand-dyed fabric pinned below the quilt--it was dyed from smoky red to black! Of course, the quilt could be a fire quilt! I would expand my fabrics to include "fire" fabrics. On the back I wanted to mourn the lost quilts and creativity. Hands are important to quilter, so I selected them to symbolize this loss."

Technique: Front: machine pieced; Back: hand and raw-edge machine appliqued, machine pieced and machine quilted
Culture: American
Geographic Location: North America
Credit Line: Gift of the Artist