Susanne Clawson (Silver Spring, MD)
Critical Mass, 2007
Fabric, batiks, collage, beads, hand sewn, and quilted
7×6 ½ in.
“I got into making quilts about two years ago. I took an online class (something I had never done before) from Susan Sorrell, who makes wonderful bright colored quilts. It was a class on using collage and embroidery to make very small quilts, about 6” X 6”.
“I fell in love with the process and since then have made about 60 of these small quilts, with lots of hand stitching and beads… Critical Mass came about because I wanted to do something all in red. I was inspired by a piece of glass art I saw. After I finished it, I thought that the two shapes collaged onto the surface reminded me of a nuclear reactor. I thought of calling it Chernobyl, but the configuration is very different. So I came up with the title of Critical Mass.”