Collier City Community Quilt

Description:
This quilt with folk art design employs motifs of homes, street signage, books, transport vehicles and sport to encircle playfully the Drew Elementary School building. The background of this center panel is embellished with plastic abc letter beads to accentuate the importance of education along with several mortarboards to reinforce completion of education at all levels. An outer framework (hand embroidered) contains buildings representing McNair Recreation Center, Family Resource Center, Collier City Library and various business buildings such as restaurants, food markets, gas stations, beauty salons and barber shops, Day Care Centers, churches and offices. The lower center sections of this framework depict various parks and playgrounds which are hand-embroidered and embellished with yo yo circles to suggest flower beds and landscaping. The quilt is installed at the new wing of the Library.

The truly dedicated community participants are all volunteers at the Mitchell Moore Senior Center and none had access to sewing machines. All the individual elements were hand sewn by the participants from patterns, materials and direction provided by the artist. All machine stitching was done by the artist. These ladies were totally dedicated and loyal to the many meetings and became very enthusiastic and excited about this project. They have expressed a desire to continue to meet and work on personal quilts and the artist has volunteered the time and effort needed to attempt the organization of a traditional quilt guild for this community.

Artist Statement:
"The main emphasis for this project was community participation in designing and producing artwork for the renovated library. Artist interviews with community participants, reference photography and on site research revealed much importance was clearly placed on education, family, home and community involvement. The truly dedicated community participants are all volunteers at the Mitchell Moore Senior Center and none had access to sewing machines. All the individual elements were hand sewn by the participants from patterns, materials and direction provided by the artist. All machine stitching was done by the artist. These ladies were totally dedicated and loyal to the many meetings and became very enthusiastic and excited about this project. They have expressed a desire to continue to meet and work on personal quilts and the artist has volunteered the time and effort needed to attempt the organization of a traditional quilt guild for this community."