A Whole Lotta Love by Tom Russell

By chance I met Tom Russell at a local quilt show recently, and discovered that he doesn't maintain a website for his work. So I offered to post an image or two of this original piece, called "A Whole Lotta Love". It's 80" square, and although it's not a bed quilt, he had laid it out on a bed to photograph, as it has not been quilted and embellished yet. So you'll see two pictures of it, in order to see the edges as well as the center. Here's what he said to me about it ...

I started it when I started quilting 5 years ago. It started as part of a workshop given by my old high school art teacher and another quilter friend. My high school art teacher's quilt was pictured across from mine in Quilting Arts Magazine. He inadvertently got me started in quilting. I designed this quilt after that workshop and it took me this long to get it finished. The HGTV stuff kept me busy for a few years along with other quilts I needed to make. I made it my goal to finish this quilt when I moved to Houston. Now that it's pieced I have to quilt it and then it's almost finished. It'll take me a few months to embellish it, but it should be show ready by the end of the year.

I found this on Tom ... http://www.apqs.com/quiltertomrussell.htm , and I knew I had seen some of his work before too ... it was the 2004 Restore America quilt block of the month that he designed for HGTV ... http://hgtv.com/hgtv/pac_ctnt_nobanner/text/0,1783,HGTV_10680_24655,FF.html ... which is an incredibly artful project.

Here are the pictures of "A Whole Lotta Love" ... now I can't wait to see the quilt in person.