Attendees to Houston International Quilt Festival this year will get to view her work in this area with 12 quilts in the special exhibit “Cathedral Windows: Contemporary Explorations.” Ellis talked to Friends@Festival about her journey on a Zoom video call.

“As an artist, you never know what’s going to spark you. That’s why you have to go on walks and go to museums and keep feeding your soul,” she says. “Who knew that one day, one quilt was going to set me on this path to make Cathedral Windows quilts?”

According to Quiltipedia, Cathedral Windows quilts are “Unlike most quilts, made without batting, with muslin as the base creating a square base, and a calico print in the window. The folding technique of the traditional construction method leaves you with a finished quilt back.”

The genesis of this exhibit came a decade ago when Ellis unearthed a handmade Cathedral Windows quilt that her grandmother made back in the 1970s. It inspired her to begin making her own series, beginning in 2015.

“I was somewhat aware that my grandmother was making quilts, and all by hand. But that was before I really started to know about quilting,” Ellis says. 

“I was going through some keepsakes and came upon this queen size Cathedral Windows quilt and it just blew my mind! These overlapping circles! And the bright acrylic colors of all these ’70s fabrics, it had this crazy selection of fabrics.”

Ellis played with the method her grandmother used to design the blocks (calling the traditional folding method the “origami method”), but realized that she needed to take a different approach. Ellis developed her own construction technique, which can be pieced entirely by machine. 

Ellis says there was no thought to having an exhibit of a collection of these quilts. But friends in her group Fiber Artists at Loose Ends encouraged her to put together one while they worked on an exhibit of “wind chime” quilts that were displayed at a previous Quilt Festival. She did hers in the Cathedral Windows style.

She calls her method of creating a “mock” CW block because her folding style is a bit of an alternative twist, allowing the petal shapes to be different from the arcs and different from the Windows. It means that basically one block could have 13 different fabrics in it.

“I wanted to open up the design possibilities. Now, I could make it on the sewing machine and really explore what you can do with this block with so many fabric choices,” she says.

And indeed, the dozen quilts in the exhibit showcase a wide variety of colors, styles, designs, and construction. And they certainly aren’t the same basic quilt just repeated over and over.

“The first one I did was Radiance, which took me six months to make and it measures 80” x 80” and weighs 15 pounds. I didn’t think my first attempt would be so big!” she laughs.

And that trend continues. Partially, Ellis says, because when she’s walked the exhibit floor at Quilt Festival, the works that made the biggest and most immediate impact on her eye are the larger efforts.

“When something stops you in your tracks and you want to engage with that piece, often it’s because it’s big and you see it at a distance. There’s something about the scale that really makes a difference,” she continues. “So, my goal was to make something that’s me, but that’s also big!”

However, one quilt that won’t be in the exhibit is the one that started it all: Her grandmother’s Cathedral Windows effort.

“That one is pretty precious, and I don’t think it would travel well,” Ellis says. “But she also made pillow toppers with her quilts, and I am going to bring that! I also hope to do some Gallery Walks.”

Finally, Ellis hopes her exhibit viewers take away something that they can then use in their own creative and artistic lives.

“This has been a really good experience for me and my journey. Me exploring this has allowed me to encourage [the idea] that an art quilt does not have to be just surface design or an abstract,” she sums up. “You can absolutely take a traditional concept and make it your own and explore it. And that makes it an art quilt.”

For more on Lisa Ellis and her works, visit www.EllisQuilts.com