Fabric Quilt, including two hanging slats, 45 in. H x 38 in. W

Artist: Patty Hawkins CO

It pleases me to share this quilt to the Ashes to Art project. Charcoal from the fires was used to color in the bottom skeletal trees. THE WILDFIRE MOSAIC ©2021 #266 art quilt is honoring the heroic work done by firefighters in Rist Canyon and Poudre Canyon, fall 2020. This quilt was earlier created to honor the firefighters of 2003, re: Wildfire of Big Elk Meadows. Very sadly, several firefighters lost their lives.

WILDFIRE AT BIG ELK ©2003 #174: Big Elk Meadows was a wildfire, all too real, as it came very near, causing evacuation of some of our community of Estes Park. It is unbelievable to know there is the possibility of a REAL WILDFIRE, devastating to everything in our everyday existence. I pay homage to the wildfire fighters who lost their lives in this fire, while saving two communities.

My hand-dyed fabrics allowed the opportunity to work in a whole cloth mode: also setting in other of my hand-dyed fabrics, to intimate smoke and clouds. The whole quilt was then machine quilted in zigzag stitchery for the fire image, and stitch drawing to suggest mountain outlines, trees and clouds of smoke.