Author: JaneLaFazio

I love red, always have. It’s my first color choice. Always. I’m attracted to any product that comes in red. A red bucket, red mix master, even red tractors. I stop myself my purchasing these, but I am helpless when it comes to red shoes. Or red sweaters. Or red purses. Red notebooks, water bottles, ipods, and paper clips. I drive a red Beetle convertible and everyone who sees the car remarks that it is totally me (even if they never met me). I have an ongoing affinity for anything red.
As I prepared to make this quilt, I gathered roving, burlap, tulle, cheese cloth and yarn, in every shade of red and machine needle felted them to create my own, completely original red material to work from.

Materials: wool roving, organza, ribbon, cheesecloth, yarn, burlap, tulle, beads, embroidery thread and felt

This piece began with a quick watercolor I did of California Tower that I printed onto silk organza. The color palette with touches of green, and the images of plants and flowers were inspired by the gorgeous landscape of Balboa Park. The pinks, creams, and ecru, and the stitched and implied arches represent the architecture throughout the park.

This piece began with a quick watercolor I did of California Tower and the stitched replica of that sketch. I’ve visited beautiful Balboa Park many times in the last 26 years that I have lived in San Diego. At each visit, I’m struck by the architecture of the buildings and then the colors of the park; the creamy vanilla stucco, reddish-pink terra cotta tile and dark brown-grey wrought iron.

For this quilt, I acknowledged the 100 year anniversary of the park with the rusted cloth and paper to indicate the beautiful aging of the park. The dupioni silk represents the elegance both past and present. Throughout the piece are stitched and beaded arches, a gentle nod to the ubiquitous shape throughout the park and its bridges.

Sedona, Canyon de Chelly, Santa Fe, Taos.

Arizona and New Mexico. The beautiful and dramatic Southwest. The colors of those landscapes stay with me. They are so evocative of the history, the heritage, and the deep and rich Native American culture.

I’ve been working with the warm colors of red, orange and yellow (oh, I mean carmine, bittersweet, and goldenrod) for quite awhile now.

My intuitive stitching often leads me to simple circles and sometimes primitive marks.

And that all takes me to the Southwest!

It’s because of Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway. Well, his house. His house in Key West, Florida.

A hundred years ago (I always say that when I don’t want to say really how many years ago it was….it was the 1970s) I visited Hemingways House in Key West, Florida. It was fascinating. But what stayed in my memory was that he had another home. One in Cuba. From that moment, I wanted to visit Hemingway’s home in Cuba.

Fast forward to late 2011. A local art association was sponsoring a tour to Cuba! I had to go! I mean, we couldn’t really afford it, but it was one of those ‘gotta do it’ decisions. I love to travel and so does my husband. So we went to Cuba in January 2012.

It was a fabulous and fascinating trip! We loved it. (I covered the trip here on my blog and then created a book of my photos of Cuba here.) The very last day of our trip, I visited Hemingway’s house in Cuba. So cool. Very cool.

So that’s how I came to create this piece, Dreaming Cuba Tobacco Fields, because as I working on this, with the browns and bits of red and pink, it reminded me of our visit to a tobacco farm…in Cuba.

Lake Como, Italy, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Surrounded by high, often snow capped mountains, its water changes color constantly. Clouds come in fast, from the Alps. From the lake, you can see hundred year old grand villas. The air is clean and clear.