VAM galleries including this work:
Museum of the American Quilter’s Society | Do You See a Pattern? || VAM Home

This award-winning quilt took two and a half years to complete, including seven months for hand quilting. It was intended as a gift for Irma Gail Hatcher’s daughter, Gailyn, to replace an earlier quilt Hatcher had made for her entitled Conway Album (I’m Not from Baltimore). That quilt won the American Quilter’s Society Quilt Show’s hand workmanship award in 1994 and was donated to the MAQS collection. But after Garden Maze won the Timeless Treasures Fabrics Excellence in Hand Workmanship Award at the same show a few years later, it, too, became a part of the museum collection.

The original designs contained in this quilt are basket and heart blocks from Hatcher’s More Conway Album Blocks books, but every block is individualized. Hatcher has always been intrigued with antique sampler quilts that include different-size pieced blocks and wanted to create a similar effect using appliquéd blocks instead.

Many of the flowers represent places where the artist and her family have lived—sunflowers for Kansas, primroses for Missouri, cherries for Michigan, pansies for Arkansas, and trumpet flowers for her grandmother’s home in Texas. Hatcher repeated several designs within the quilt to unify the overall design. It wasn’t until the blocks were all made that the idea for the border really came together. It was to be a fence around the whole garden maze. The balls on top of the fence were inspired by cement balls on some fences in Conway, Arkansas, where Hatcher lives. She says that the appliquéd stair-step border was the most challenging appliqué she has ever done.

About the Artist

Former elementary school teacher Irma Gail Hatcher began quilting by making a small potholder at a craft meeting she attended in 1980. She fell in love with quilting after attending her first quilt show in 1982. Since then, she has become nationally known for her three-dimensional hand appliqué and has won numerous awards. Her quilts have been exhibited internationally, and she teaches around the country and is the author of eight books on quilting. Her quilt Conway Album (I’m Not from Baltimore) was named one of the 100 Best American Quilts of the 20th Century.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: What images are associated with our state? What natural and manmade attractions are related to your region of Kentucky? What are the state flower, bird, motto, tree, song, and other designated items? Why do you think the artist called this quilt about places she has lived “Garden Maze”?

Activities: Create a drawing or quilt design relating to places you have lived. Explain why you chose specific images.

Read the story of Daedalus and Icarus and discuss the concept of mazes. (Information is available at www.socialstudiesforkids.com or www.goingfaster.com/icarus/icaruslegend.html.) Try some mazes online and learn about how they are made by logging on to www.mazes.org.uk or www.crystalinks.com/labyrinths.html. As a math exercise, plan and create your own labyrinth using the techniques discussed on the web sites, including using birdseed to mark the outlines.

Research the planting cycle in your region and develop a plan for a garden designed for a specific purpose: a flower garden that has blooms all year, an herb garden of delightful aromas and useful herbs, a vegetable garden that could supply a family with food, a memorial garden for soldiers in the community who died in past wars. Write letters to seed companies to secure seed packets and/or additional information about planting. Invite local gardeners and horticulturalists to speak to the class about planting and maintaining gardens. If possible, plant a garden in the community that the class can maintain.

Links

Read more about Irma Gail Hatcher and see images of her quilts at the artist’s web site.
[www.irmagailhatcher.com]

The 100 Best Quilts of the 20th Century project is described at the PBS A Century of Quilts site.
[www.pbs.org/americaquilts/]