Modern quilting with the Mesa County Library artist in residence
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GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. —“When you think of quilts, you don't think ‘gigantic cheeseburger,’” said Maryanna Powell as she cut and sorted pieces of fabric in her studio space at the Mesa County library.
“There's just so many different things that you can do with quilting now,” Powell said. “For our anniversary a few years ago, I made my husband a quilt, and it’s a cheeseburger. It's a gigantic cheeseburger.”
Powell made 13 quilts last year. She found the hobby on a whim over a decade ago, picking up a sewing machine and $100 worth of fabric, and hasn’t stopped since – even when she lived on a boat for three and a half years.
On dry land in Grand Junction, Powell is the current artist in residence at the library, a program that gives people a studio to work on projects, publicly show their work, and put on a few classes or workshops about their medium.
Artists are paid a $2,000 stipend for the 14-week program. The Artist in Residence program is the only one like it in a Western Slope library, and has been around for nine years. The Boulder Public Library has a similar 10-week residency with a $3,000 stipend.
Powell’s style is modern quilting, a distinct style from traditional quilting that uses different fabric patterns and more efficient sewing techniques, and an attitude that a quilt can be anything.
Powell’s husband is a travel nurse and the pair lived on a boat (with room to sew) while traveling around Florida. They decided to move permanently to Colorado in 2020 after he had an assignment in the state. She ran an Etsy store, making custom orders while they travelled, but it took the fun out of sewing for her.
“I don't make quilts with the intention of trying to sell it, if that makes sense. I just make whatever I want to make,” Powell said.
The giant cheeseburger is one of hundreds of quilts she’s made over the years, along with countless other projects such as sashiko patchwork to up-cycle tote bags, or adding quilted pockets to hoodies. Sashiko is a decorative embroidery stitch and one of the subjects of a class Powell has taught during the residency.
One of the first quilts she ever made had a second life as a pair of overalls for a statue in downtown Grand Junction as part of the temporary Urban Fibers project, put on by the city commission on arts and culture and the Downtown Grand Junction Creative District. The statue of a girl on a bike at 4th and Main Street, “Freewheelin II,” has been a fixture of the Art on the Corner program for decades, its weathered bronze finish gained some summer color with the addition of the quilted overalls.
Just four days after Powell spent hours sewing the overalls on, someone tried to rip them off the statue, damaging one of the straps. The overalls were torn half off, but remained enough intact to be repaired. Powell took them home and reinforced some of the seams and put them back on a few days later.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Powell knelt next to the statue, the busy intersection at 4th and Main a few feet behind her. Visitors stopped to take a photo as she made a ladder stitch up the left side of the overalls, securing them to the statue for the next few weeks.
970West Studio, home to the residency space and a state of the art production and recording studio that’s free and open to the public, sits next to the downtown Grand Junction central library branch.
It’s been open for almost a decade, and library patrons have spent hundreds of hours recording music, podcasts, and videos in the building. Local musicians such as crêpe girl and Zolopht have recorded songs in the studio.
Since the residency program started in 2016, 27 artists have participated, according to Jessica Geddes, art librarian at Mesa County Libraries. The call for artists to apply for next year’s residencies will open at the end of July on the library website.
“Our main goal has been to provide Mesa County artists with dedicated studio space while fostering connections between the community and a diverse range of artists and art forms,” said Geddes, in an email to Rocky Mountain PBS.
Geddes said the program is open to artists at all stages of their careers, and the interaction with the community gives them a chance to develop and practice teaching and public speaking skills, along with their artistic work.
In 2023, Powell’s friend Hannah Martin-Vogel was the summer artist in residence, working with ceramics and sketchbooks. That’s how Powell first heard of the program, and thought she could use the time to finish some quilts she hadn’t worked on in a while.
The Bernina sewing machine Powell brought to the studio belonged to her grandmother, who made childrens clothes, setting a precedent for working with fabric in her family.
She recently started working at Craft Addict Junction, a local craft store, and would like to eventually start a local chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. She says Grand Junction is home now, days of moving every three months behind her.
“If I make a quilt for a friend who's having a baby, I want them to use that. I want them to have picnics on it, build forts with it, I want that quilt to be used,” she said.
To Powell, there’s no better compliment than seeing her work become part of someone’s everyday life.
The blue and white quilt hangs over a closet door in the studio as Powell arranges strips of fabric, adding up the time it takes to make each block, about 20 minutes. She’s made 14 out of 40 blocks for this quilt top, which will take 13 hours total to finish. One of her pieces will hang in 970West Studio after the residency, along with art from other past participants.
Between talking with curious visitors and teaching a class on hand-sewn bookmarks, she might have time to finish the piece.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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