Remembering Lynn

One of the people in my piecing class at the Crow Barn last month was Betty Goodwin, whom I have known for several years.  Even if you don't know her, you may know of her as the donor of a major prize at Quilt National, the Lynn Goodwin Borgman Award for Surface Design. Lynn was Betty's daughter, an avid quilter, and the two had frequently attended workshops and quilt shows together, enjoying the opportunity to spend time together without the distractions of family and chores.

Lynn Borgman














Lynn died unexpectedly in 1999 after supposedly routine outpatient surgery and it was left to Betty to deal with her fabric stash.  A lot was given away but Betty kept some things, including many, many yards of the old Pointillist Palette fabrics in every colorway that had been produced.

She brought some of them to our workshop, wondering if maybe she could use them after all those years.  Well, why not?  What better way to remember your loved one than to  bring her into the room with you as you work with her fabric.

Betty used the pointillist fabric for this exercise in fine line piecing, and it proved to be an interesting experiment in value contrast.  Notice how the fine lines pop out in some places and disappear in others.  She also achieved a nice effect by cutting the center panel out of the piecing and flipping it around.

Before her death, Lynn had been planning to attend a workshop that required a lot of strips, so she had methodically cut them to size and packed them in storage boxes.  Betty had kept those too and brought them along.

She sliced the strips even narrower to use as fine lines in the piecing.  Here is the composition in progress; the print strips made beautiful delicate lines to set off the solid color blocks.

Here's Betty with her work for the week:

It's always energizing to have the spirit of someone else in the room while you're making art, one reason why I love to work with other people's leftovers.  Although none of the rest of us had the pleasure of knowing Lynn, we felt her presence and love with us in the room.