Corona #2: Solar Eclipse

This was the first machine quilted quilt to win Best of Show in the American Quilters Society show in Paducah in 1989.
Since the time I was a young child in a grade school science class, I have been fascinated by the dramatic storms on the surface of the sun, which can flair out into the sky for hundreds of miles. The few minutes during a solar eclipse are the time when astronomers are actually able to observe the solar storms in the Corona of the sun.

This is my second quilt portraying the solar eclipse (when the moon comes between the earth and the sun, so that the disk of the sun is covered.) The Corona is the envelope of ionized gasses, surrounding the chromasphere of the sun, which is visible during a solar eclipse. CORONA II: SOLAR ECLIPSE, is more a portrayal of my feelings about the power of the sun, than an exact representation of what a scientist might see through a telescope.

My use of a traditional quilt block on the back of this contemporary art quilt is my tribute to the creativity of the many anonymous quilt artists of the past. I chose "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul" as my traditional block in this case, because it is based on a circle, and carries out the circular theme of the sun and moon on the front of the quilt.