When we say that people create something – a rumor, a myth, a conspiracy – out of whole cloth, we mean that they invented something out of thin air that has no basis in fact or reality. Essentially, we mean that they've lied, that they've sold us an untrue and/or unverifiable bill of goods. When we say that a quilt is made of whole cloth, we mean it very literally. It's a genre that goes back many centuries, a form that capitalizes on the low-sculpture or bas-relief effects that the quilted stitch can produce. In the quilt domain, it's as fundamental and honest, as truthful, as a quilt gets.

When I created the Suntreader series, I was drawn to the tondo form in part out of a desire to make something that wouldn't be mistaken for a bed covering. These were unmistakably objects for the wall. Their size and form bore no relationship to the bed, whose tyranny had kept quilts under its thumb ever since someone had decided they'd provide comfort and warmth and a good night's sleep.

Suntreader Monophony, 1979, 60" diameter. Polyester blend polished chintz; hand-quilted. Purchased by the Muncie (Indiana) Art Association in 1982 as a gift to the Ball State University Art Museum, now the David Owsley Museum of Art.

I have the American composer Carl Ruggles to thank for the series's title. I first heard his symphonic work Sun-Treader on a broadcast of Ron Della Chiesa's radio program Music America on Boston's WGBH, my regular listening focus during studio afternoons in the 1970s and 1980s. My first tondo, Suntreader Monophony, was in the drawing stage at that point, and something I heard in the musical dissonances in Ruggles' work aligned with my sensibility about the developing patterns in my quilt's diagram. That Ruggles was born in Marion, Massachusetts, very close to my hometown of New Bedford, further reinforced the affinity I felt with his work. Had I known then of his racism and anti-semitism, however, I'd likely have distanced myself. Dishonorable world views and behaviors are deal breakers for me.

A pen and ink rendering of Suntreader Monophony that I made in the course of developing the overall framework for that quilt and the two subsequent tondos. (Documentary photo above for insurance purposes, not studio quality.)

By the time I quilted the tondos, including Suntreader Monophony, I'd fine-tuned my two-thimble quilting technique so successfully that I had no trouble sustaining a pretty exact continuum of fine stitches that even the most innovation-averse traditionalists had to respect. Naturally it was very time-intensive, but I liked the meditative state it induced. Stitch by stitch, interval by interval, my fingers, needle and thread slowly furrowed the fabric sandwich until an indented topography was fully navigated.

I was a logical next step to exploit the grid skeleton as a pieced pattern in which color and different fabric types would play with and through that vertical-horizontal scaffold. Suntreader Polyphony was the result. Like the earlier Tossed Salad Quilt and Poppies, it was purchased by IBM for its Essex Junction, Vermont campus in the early 1980s. Currently, I have no idea of its whereabouts.

Installation of Suntreader Polyphony at the IBM campus, Essex Junction, Vermont, early 1980s.

Installation of Suntreader Polyphony at the IBM campus, Essex Junction, Vermont, early 1980s.

The countless hours I spent hand-quilting the works in this series are lost in time, and going back this far I can only retrieve vague recollections. I know that I'd fabricated a large vinyl/canvas zippered carryall into which my large quilting hoop fit, the quilt in progress, whatever it was, held tightly in place. I remember even taking it along with me as overhead luggage when I traveled to workshops and lectures, something that surely would be verboten today. I remember demonstrating my two-thimble quilting technique wherever I went, always received with major curiosity and bemusement. That it was portable made a big differnece: I could take advantage of every pause or opening in my schedule to get a few more inches stitched. And a few more after that, and after that. One stitch at a time, and eventually it's done.