Many years ago during America's Bicentennial Celebration of 1976, I gazed in awe at the beautiful quilts shown in books and magazines. The pictorial quilts were my favorites because they told stories or reflected history and happenings in colorful fabric pictures. What remarkable quilt memorials to days and times gone by! From that moment on, this art form totally captured my interest.

Over the years that followed I gradually learned the basic skills of quilt making by taking classes, reading, and experimenting on my own. By 1990, I was ready to create my first original pictorial quilt, "Paintbrush Panorama - A Centennial Salute to Wyoming" (see left). This quilt portrayed the state's beauty, rich cultural heritage, and changing economic foundation over the last 100 years. When this quilt traveled in exhibits, requests were received from other quilters for patterns of original designs in this quilt. In response, I first provided an instruction booklet for the Indian Paintbrush design, our state flower, and then the Lupine Wildflower pattern came a few years later.

My first designs were often inspired by my Western and mountain surroundings or derived from other prize winning pictorial quilts. Now my inspirations come out of the air and everywhere! My new-found, hobby based business was called "Chickadee Charms" after my childhood nickname "Chickadee".

At this time there are thirty two books or booklets available based on copyrighted patchwork picture designs created primarily by fabric piecing methods. I strive to develop designs which are realistic and balanced in composition, but relatively easy to construct. Many of the blocks are standardized to 12" square - or multiples thereof - so that they can be combined to make unique sampler quilts.

My hope is that I can enable others to create in fabric a pictorial history of their interests and lifestyle which can be treasured and passed on. In this way, we can reach out beyond our own time so that others can know what we were like - how we lived and what we loved. That is what makes quilts, and especially pictorial quilts, so special!

Thank you for stopping by my Chickadee Charms web site.