For a school year, I took care of a mother of children aged 10 and 13; she suffered from Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease for 7 years prior. This quilt represents her journey from a complete and full life of wife, mother, and veterinarian to a fading away of her capabilities; the ivory pieces exhibit her loss of skills and memories, slight at first with occasional glitches and becoming more erratic and chaotic as she fades away. The brown binding represents the shrinking of her world to the facility in which she now resides. One day she’ll be released into the next life where she will be made whole again. The block name is Hole in the Barn Door.
Fading Away
Darlene Morse
Medium: Quilting
NFS
Test Fabrics 419 Cotton was hand-dyed with Procion MX Dye color “Hot Chocolate” in a 10 step value gradation.
Individually cut pieces were fused to the lightest background fabric. Six thread colors varying from dark brown to ivory were used to quilt the piece.
The border is a separate mottled hand-dyed cotton not included in the gradation. Completed June 2025.
