Why do I do what I do? Why do I make quilts? What am I trying to accomplish? Artists are often asked such questions, but I find them a little intimidating. I quilt because I breathe, because several generations of my family were quilt makers, so maybe it's a genetic condition. I love the many layers of quilts—figurative, actual, visual, psychological, and historical. I love quilting because the medium has many inherent meanings—comfort, warmth, frugality, motherhood, love—even before you start cutting out pieces of fabric and sewing them together into realistic or abstract images that suggest your own meanings. Quilts are palimpsests by their very nature.

Each of my quilts is unique. I make wall quilts, bed quilts, and wearable quilts. I use both hand-dyed and commercial fabrics and Japanese yukata cotton. I love to explore color relationships, suggest visual illusions and moods through color, and make traditional patterns fresh and new again through the use of color, contemporary fabrics, and offbeat arrangements of elements. I also explore spiritual concepts, especially Buddhist ideas, in some of my work. I like to be as open and spontaneous as I can when I work and let each quilt tell me where it wants to go.

Each of my quilts takes months to make, not only because it's a very labor-intensive and slow medium, but also because I usually use hundreds of different fabrics in each quilt, and I move all the pieces around my design wall again and again to get the perfect placement of value and hue.

In short, when I quilt, I speak from the heart. I hope you will be able to hear.