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Over the more than 30 years that I’ve been a quilter, I’ve discovered that strong emotions provide the seeds for many of my best ideas. Fear and anxiety when my son sustained a terrible injury produced my first art quilt, “Danny’s Left Arm.” Sorrow for a friend dying of AIDS lead to “Each Pink Triangle Has Its Own Story.” In the case of a quilt titled “For Peanuts and Schroeder,” frustration and anger provided the impetus.

A bit of the back-story is necessary to understand the gestation of this particular creative idea: About ten years ago, my dear mother-in-law, Peanuts, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Luckily, it was caught very early, but she had to endure surgery, chemo, and radiation. When she was on her way to recovery, I learned that one of my best friends from college was also in the midst of dealing with this terrible disease. Her surgery was more extreme and then her reconstructive surgery was not successful.

I knew that an idea for a quilt was beginning to grow somewhere in my body. Shortly after this, I happened to be in a fabric store and picked up a book that was about breast cancer quilts. As I looked at these rather flowery, sunshiny creations, I began to get angry. I thought, these certainly do not reflect anything of what my friends went through, nor how they came out the other side, and that is what I want to capture in my quilt. This quilt was kicking and moving around, but would not be born.

Later that week, we had a snow day and I started it by reading the New Yorker. In one of the articles, the writer quoted Andrea Dworkin’s short story, “A new womans broken heart” and her words leapt out and grabbed me like that first contraction of the womb:
“I have no patience with the untorn, anyone who hasn’t weathered rough weather, fallen apart, been ripped to pieces, put herself back together, big stitches, jagged cuts, nothing nice. Then something shines out.”

I immediately went to my studio. Dumping out the box of pink scraps, I began to fuse the most jagged pieces and compose the top. The big stitches that connect the jagged pieces come right from Dworkin’s words.

I did include flowers, but they were raw-edge appliquéd.

I decided to use a blanket stitch to finish the edges so that the quilt looked barely held together.

Finally, this was what I wanted to express. Dworkin’s words have a place of honor on the back of the quilt because they broke the water and made it possible for this quilt to be born.

About Dana

Dana Warner Fisher has been making quilts since 1975. A traditional quilter at the outset, she made her first art quilt in 1988 following her son’s life-threatening accident. She studied several times with the renowned quilt artist, Nancy Crow at Arrowmont School of the Arts, and with British quilter, Pauline Burbidge at Quilt/ Surface Design Symposium. Her work has been exhibited at the Old Jail Museum, Wabash College, Skidmore College, Denison University, Quilt America (Indianapolis), the American Quilters’ Society Show (Paducah), the International Quilt Festival (Houston), Quilt/Surface Design Symposium Invitational ’99 (Columbus, Ohio), the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Crawfordsville (Indiana) District Public Library where she has had three one-woman shows. Her quilt, “Improvizo!” was photographed for the Quilt Art Calendar and graces the cover of one of her husband’s books, The Theatre of Yesterday and Tomorrow. The Indiana Arts Commission owns two of her quilts and another is part of the permanent collection of the Theatre Museum of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. Dana’s blog is called The Quilted Librarian