Betsy True Designs
The quilts in this gallery were inspired by places things I've seen and people who I admire. I love interpreting nature in fabric.
En Pointe was done for the Black, White and Pink challenge on QuiltArt.com. It was chosen to be part of a exhibition that travelled to Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Lyon, France. Cotton and satin. Machine pieced and quilted. Copyright 2005 Betsy True
Winter Chair was based on a photograph I took at a friend’s home in Colorado. It was part of the Journal Quilt project in the online QuiltArt group. Cotton, velvet. 17 x 22 inches Fused, machine appliqued and quilted. Copyright 2007 Betsy True.
I made this quilt for a challenge to make a quilt inspired by a piece of traditional African fabric. The colors, and the shapes of the water and the bird foot prints came from the fabric. The bird is a purple swamphen (now called African swamphen, native to the same area as the fabric. The […]
This quilt was made for the juried exhibition Fly Me to the Moon celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and is currently travelling. The call for entries asked for just about anything that mentioned the moon, from depictions of the Apollo missions and astronauts to the moon in nature and popular culture. The […]
I made this quilt for the juried exhibition What’s For Dinner for the 2015 Houston International Quilt Festival. Everyone loved my mom’s chocolate chip cookies. She made a batch every week while I was growing up, and everyone in the neighborhood enjoyed them. Cotton fabrics, linen napkin, sheer fabric for milk glass. Machine appliqued […]
I made this quilt for the juried exhibition I Remember Mama. It travelled as part of that exhibition across America and to Lyon, France. It depicts my mom at approximately age 19 in the large picture, soon after she left her home in Hibbing, Minnesota to come to Washington, DC to be one of the […]
This quilt is based on a photograph I took at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. I love the tranquility of the lotus and lily ponds at the Aquatic Gardens. In a private collection. I added some color to the silk lotus blossoms with textile paint. Cotton and silk. Machine appliqué, machine quilted. Painted. 16.5 x 25 […]
I started this piece in a Ruth McDowell workshop in 2002 at the Empty Spools Seminar in Asilomar, California. The design is mine in its entirety, using Ruth’s methods. It is pieced. I was honored to talk to Ruth many years later at the Vermont Quilt Festival and she said she remembered the quilt very […]
Currently traveling with the juried HerStory exhibition. Frances Perkins was the first woman member of the cabinet, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and wrote most of the New Deal and many of the labor laws that came out of that administration. This quilt depicts a defining moment in Frances’s life: witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. […]
One in a series of quilts based on photographs I’ve taken in natural settings, this one in La Jolla, California. Close up, one can see the spectacularly turquoise blue eye of the cormorant. Commercial cotton fabrics and yarn. 15 x 17.5 inches Copyright 2009 Betsy True Private collection.
I have long loved the shape of aspen leaves and the beautiful colors they turn, contrasting with the pale bark of the tree. This is my interpretation of aspen leaves in the fall, inspired by a trip to Colorado. Commercial cotton and silk fabrics. 21.5 x 30.5 inches Copyright 2014 Betsy True private collection.
