In memory of my brother, Robert Howard Barker, Jr.
October 31, 1952—September 24, 2022

Rob challenged me to undertake the creation of this quilt at the end of our remarkable, last conversation just days before he died.  He had spoken with a scientist’s fearless curiosity and open acceptance of the wonder and mystery in multiple universes, large and small, and of our participation in the exchange of matter and energy in the cosmos: “Betsy, that’s your next quilt!”

For the next two years, the unfolding of this quilt became my own grief’s journey: a lesson in imagining the unknowable and learning to let go.

 Quilt dimension: 40.75 x 35.25 inches

*from Chet Raymo’s book by the same title.

2023

Available as giclée print and art card

Two common European birds—a Crested Tit and a Red-backed Shrike—salvaged from worn tea towels, heavily thread-painted, appliquéd, and given new life in sun-soaked thickets and briarwoods.

Quilt dimensions:  48 x 42 inches.

2022

Available as a giclée print and art card.

Nestled in Calf Cove, Monhegan, ME, I hear June’s first light streaming through the northern sky: song of the universe waking.

Quilt dimensions: 29.25 x 21.75 inches

(The title is from Returning by Wendell Berry.)

2022
Available as giclée print and art card.

In September of 2021 a juvenile Great Blue Heron on Monhegan Island, ME, captivated me. Held in a shimmering moment in time, this young bird on the cusp of adulthood became pensive and still: the central feature in a tableau of uncommon calm.

Quilt dimensions: 37.5 x 19.5 inches.

2022
Available as a giclée print

My joy in painting with fabric often comes from using new materials and interesting techniques. (This piece began in a Mary Pal workshop.) Here, a wind-tossed evergreen, sculpted in hand-dyed cheese cloth, dances with ravens along a glimmering shoreline.

Quilt dimensions: 16.25 x 13.25 inches.

2021 (Private collection of Nancy Strecker)
Available as giclée print

A radiant sunflower exults in a late summer dawn. Our hearts rise, singing. (This quilt, based on my own photograph, began in a Sandra Mollon workshop.)

2011 (Private collection of Stephen S. Fuller and Susan D. Bateson)

Hidden patterns within a tide pool’s fluid dance of light and color: a world of quiet wonder.

Quilt dimensions: 30¼ x 25¼ inches

2020
Available as giclée print and art card

Each year, in early May on the mid-Atlantic coast, the spawning of the Horseshoe Crab at the highest tide provides essential food for the Red Knot at a crucial moment in its epic, northern migration of 9,000 miles.

Now critically threatened by human predation, habitat destruction, and global warming, Horseshoe Crabs and Red Knots struggle to sustain their remarkable interplay…strengthening my commitment to find and create beauty in a broken world.

This mandala carries a call from the wild to experience the upwelling pull of the moon at spring tide, the life force that has supported these species for eons.

Quilt dimensions: 19.5 by 19 inches

2020

Available as giclée print and art card

Every quilt tells a story. This one is inspired by a children’s story adapted from an original by Loren Eiseley about the power of human compassion. Here, after a violent storm, a young child saves stranded starfish one-by-one, affirming that whatever the odds, a simple act of caring for another may make a difference beyond our imagining.

Quilt dimensions: 36 by 31¼ inches.

2020 (Private collection of Stephen S. Fuller and Susan D. Bateson)
Available as giclée print and art card

A pair of Black-crowned Night-Herons gliding through luminous, moonlit air: a seascape softer than silence.

Quilt dimensions: 34 by 25 inches.

2019
Available as giclée print and art card

The poised pounce of a Harrier hunting in the soft hues of an autumnal salt marsh: a tableau of serenity and power.

Quilt dimensions: 37 by 31 inches.

2018
Available as giclée print and art card

The riveting gaze of a Snowy Owl and the numinous aura of Northern Lights speak of mythological and primeval mystery: wild, arctic spirits.

Quilt dimensions: 41 by 32¾ inches.

2017
Available as giclée print and art card

Thanks to the courageous advocacy of Rachel Carson, the agricultural use of DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972, and the Osprey has successfully repopulated New England’s shores; once again thriving as a fearless and wild presence. 

Quilt dimensions: 22¼  by 16¾ inches.

2017
Available as giclée print and art card

The expanding glow from a mid-summer sunset envelops Wik-Wak Cottage on Monhegan Island, ME, while lingering light shimmers among lengthening shadows: iconic, plein air quietude. 

Quilt dimensions: 25 x 31½ inches.

2016
Available as giclée print and art card

Early morning mist nestles in the sere valley of the ephemeral Klip River below Grootberg Lodge in the Kunene region of Damaraland, Namibia.  This breathtaking vista is in the heartland of the ≠Khoadi-//Hôas Conservancy, a protected wild domain, where a soaring Verreaux’s Eagle bears witness to the life-force that exists even in a barren land. 

Quilt dimensions: 29¾ x 23 inches.

2016
Available as giclée print and art card

An early evening’s glow washes over the numinous dunes of Sossusvlei, Namibia, highlighting the stark beauty of a lone, dead tree: a witness to the still passage of time’s shadow over one of the oldest deserts on earth. 

Quilt dimensions: 21 x 17¾ inches.

2016
Available as giclée print and art card

The red sand dunes of Sossusvlei, Namibia, are a sheer natural wonder.  Developed over many millions of years, some of them are among the tallest in the world. Their forms change shape with the wind; their colors shift and shadow in the day’s variable light. A surreal, desert landscape imbued with a silent, ineffable spirit. 

Quilt dimensions: 25¼ x 17 inches.

2016
Available as giclée print and art card

To see and hear the mute sentience of wild elephants is to deepen a reverence for all forms of life. Etosha National Park in Namibia provides many such epiphanies. These three animals emerged “as silently as clouds rolling out of the mouth of a valley (Kipling),” striding softly right into my soul. This quilt keeps our connections whole.

Quilt dimensions: 24½ x 18¼ inches.

2015 (Private collection)
Available as giclée print and art card

Another expression of my love for ordinary things. For well over half a century, these artifacts have been hanging high up in the dim stairwell of a historic building on Monhegan, ME, for years the home of the Lupine Gallery. Hidden in plain view, they bear silent witness to those who have sustained a time-honored fishing industry on the Island. 

Quilt dimensions: 14 x 11 ¼ inches.

2015 (Private collection of Lynn and Malcolm Best)
Available as giclée print and art card

I am inspired by the life force in nature that persists against heavy odds. A lone spruce on the headlands of Monhegan sparked my vision for the design of this quilt. It challenged me to capture such elemental tenacity to root and to hold in this ancient weathered rock, despite being torqued through years of icing gales. Bathed in hazy foglight, it reflects the resilient spirit that sustains this Island community. 

Quilt dimensions:  18 x 14 inches.

2015 (Private collection of Jamie Wyeth)
Available as giclée print and art card

Wildness feeds my spirit. Here it inspired me to imagine and capture through this original design the wonders within transparent worlds beneath the ocean’s surface off Down East Maine, where beauty and terror often coexist. The more I explore these complex perspectives, the deeper my delight in the sheer mystery of the natural world. 

Quilt dimensions: 34½ x 42½ inches.

2001
Available as giclée print and art card

I made this quilt as a wedding gift for my niece, who was married on the Eastern Shore of Maryland four days after September 11. She are her husband were about to depart for two years of work in Africa. I chose two traditional quilting patterns: the mariner’s compass for the sunrise and the arc of flying geese highlighted by the most visible pair for the newlyweds. I wanted to honor the way geese mate for life, migrate, and always return home again, in this case to the waters of the blue crab.  

Quilt dimensions: 26 x 23¾ inches.

2006
Available as giclée print and art card

Kayaking around Monhegan, Maine, gives me close-up opportunities to watch these intriguing cormorants, so sleek and snake-like in the water and so quirky and angular when they hang out to dry on rocky (and odiferous!) outposts. Trying to capture iridescence and reflected light in this original design taught me, once more, how beautiful many common things can be when we really look at them. 

Quilt dimensions: 48 x 35½ inches.

2007
Available as giclée print and art card

I based my original design for this quilt on a photograph of Deadman Cove on Monhegan Island, ME, taken from one of our family cottages where we have summered for generations.  In it I wanted to capture the fleeting luminosity of a dramatic dawn and the shifting qualities of island light reflecting and refracting through sea air.  

Quilt dimensions: 38½ x 20½ inches.

2009 (Private collection of Jamie Wyeth)
Available as giclée print and art card

I could explore tide pools for hours on end!  Those on Monhegan remain special fascinations.  In this quilt I challenged myself to capture both the reflections above and the refractions and transparencies below the water line and to include the universe of biota that inhabit these small worlds between the tides.  

Quilt dimensions: 38 x 46 inches.

2002
Available as giclée print and art card

Deeply saddened and frightened by the attacks of September 11, 2001, I felt an almost visceral need to hold beautiful colors in my hands and try to create something ordered and lovely. For my own solace, I chose to work with the feathered star pattern. What began to emerge for me was a symbol of possibility for a broken world. As I sewed, words of several poets came to me like mantras, especially Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the thing with feathers.          

Early in the process, I found that creating this star for myself was not enough.  I needed to place it in the context of flaming destruction and smoldering despair, from which it could arise, declaring that regardless of circumstance, we can still say “yes” and choose well.

As I began to share my evolving quilt with family and friends and invite their several reactions and suggestions, its design improved through their participation with me: a healing and hopeful work for us all. 

For me, the story in this quilt lives well beyond its beginnings, imagining a better future for anyone experiencing dark or trying times.  

Quilt dimensions: 57 x 57 inches.

2014
Available as giclée print and art card

I created this original quilt for the marriage of my son Tim Abbott and Talya Leodari on June 14, 2014, celebrated at “Windrock,” our historic family home on the shores of Buzzards Bay, MA.  It served as the centerpiece of their wedding chuppah.  I wanted its natural symbolism and dancing light to illumine and sustain the mystery and vitality of their new life together. 

Quilt dimensions: 40 x 50 inches.

2008
Available as giclée print and art card

The return of the osprey to Buzzards Bay, MA, was one of my parents’ abiding pleasures in their later years. When my father died after 54 years of marriage and 8 years of Alzheimer’s, I believed his freed spirit soared on the wings of these powerful birds, keeping watch over both mother and their home. My mother died sixteen years later, at 97, and I made this quilt to honor their faithfulness to each other, reunited as I feel they are now “on the wings of the morning.”

Quilt dimensions: 48½ x 32 inches.

2005 (Private collection of Elizabeth W. Hartnick)
Available as giclée print and art card

The inspiration for this original design came to me as I was observing a total eclipse of the moon while driving home from a quilt workshop in New Hampshire.  As I parked the car in our Andover driveway, and the moon was almost fully eclipsed, I heard a screech owl calling in our woods.  I wanted somehow to capture that very instant.  Knowing that screech owls prey on luna moths, a crucial design element emerged.  What remains in this captured moment is the possibility that the moth will make it to safety.  Or will it too be eclipsed?  

Quilt dimensions: 55 x 51 inches.

2013
Available as giclée print and art card

Common Ravens thrive in New England only where there is wild land enough for them to exist free from the pressures of habitat loss and direct persecution by humans. They are intelligent, raucous, opportunistic, and vigorous in defending their territory and found prey.  The ravens of Monhegan Island, Maine, have delighted me for years.  I rejoice in knowing that they continue to stake their claim to the island’s protected forests and rocky shores. 

Quilt dimensions: 48 x 40 inches.

2012
Available as giclée print and art card

On the roof of a tiny cottage gallery on Monhegan Island, ME, stands a remarkable, wrought metal weathervane, an abstract fish form with irregular openings for scales, mounted on an equally large iron stanchion.  Mostly unnoticed by passers-by, it remains a curious delight to me.  What if the light passing through these open spaces suddenly scattered into myriad prismatic colors, radiating a visible praise-song to a quintessential summer sunset?  Hence, my original quilt design.  

Quilt dimensions: 31½ x 24¾ inches.

2010
Available as giclée print and art card

The common teasel, a mere roadside weed…but…what if we truly took the time to notice its fantastic curved bracts, its contrasting sharp spikes, and its wide band of minute purple flowers which make it such a marvel in its own right? What if we learned to really see the “wonderful” in the “ordinary” all around us, to find beauty in the simplest of things?  How much more interesting the world suddenly becomes!  How much more, then, might we care for each unique part of the whole? 

Quilt dimensions: 33½ x 27¼ inches.