Betty Rush Artwork

 

My mother and my father together made afghans like this one when they were courting. This is shawl is composed of knitted patchwork squares, some with stitches or patterns my mother designed herself (top left, see the spider design in one square and top right, see the face in another). It was designed to be intentionally lopsided. This canvas needlepoint is a chair cover for a Director's Chair. Mom made many jokes about how she was in charge, so she should have a Director's Chair with her name on it. This is a collection of crazy-quilt patchwork squares made of my father's neckties. Sometimes it took an entire day to lay out one square, getting it so the textures and colors looked right together. Then she used that feather stitch you see here to tie them together with a stripe of black velvet down between the squares and around the border. The finished quilt is just big enough to throw over you for a nap on the couch. Mom never wanted you to wonder if you were tucking your face where someone else's feet had been, so she embroidered More silk necktie art.
Mom did not think of herself as a quiltmaker, although she did make several quilts. This is a sampler design. A friend of Mom's came up with this design. Each square is made individually, then they're all stitched together. Mom wrote cute little sayings on the backs of every Here you can see the cute sayings Mom wrote on the backs of each quilt block. Sometimes she drew little pictures or got someone to sign the quilt block. Some of them are like diary entries. It took her about 15 years to complete this quilt. It will cover a king sized bed. Needlepoint used on a footstool. The footstool.
Applique technique Mom was experimenting with. These are a combination of applique and quilting. Mom began doing these during and before my childhood in the1950s and '40s. The top right is a phrase she invented in her 50s: She used a form of lacemaking on the right hand sampler pillow.
Needlepoint animals Needlepoint dragon Needlepoint using embroidery techniques where she knotted the yarn and made a 3-D effect The top two pillows were done in the 1940s I believe More experiments
These are woven. Mom wanted to duplicate the pattern of a family blanket, so she taught herself to weave and figured out how to put patterns into her weaving, just as she had done in knitting, by varying the way the loom was set up. (Front and Back) Just a little project she worked on while she and Dad were on a trip in the motor home. I believe she used a needlepoint canvas here and an embroidery technique. Mom designed this simple quilt. She made each square individually, then stitched them together. When the quilt is completely laid out, on one side every other square is a prety pattern (the in-between squares are plain white or pink), and when you flip it over, the colored squares are solids. This quilt is washable. And in the lower right corner, she printed the Down on the Farm logo from the annual 4th of July Crafts Festivals she hosted at our farm in Blue Ball in the 1970s-'80s.

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