Rita's Boundaries: Doors of Waco

Boundary n:  something (as a line, point, or plane) that indicates or fixes a limit.

Door n:  a sliding or swinging barrier by which an entry is closed and opened.

In times past, I have seen posters of doors from cities, such as San Antonio.  These posters became an inspiration for my quilt when the challenge word “Boundaries” was announced.

This called for a day trip with Randy and his camera.  It was a fun experience driving around Waco looking for the picturesque and unusual and historical and noteworthy doors.  Doors that many have seen and been through, but never really noticed because they are passage to what lies beyond and we often do not notice the boundary we have crossed.

The photographs that would make up my quilt were chosen and cropped and resized.  I did the cropping (on black and white images with ruler and pencil) and Randy (and Photoshop) did the resizing.  The resulting photos were printed on fabric with an ink jet printer.  The color was added with dry Prismacolor water-soluble pencils.  I had first envisioned adding water to actually water-color the photos, but the bleeding that occurred quickly made it obvious that would not work.  I liked how the rather soft color reminded me of hand painted photos of many years ago.  (Side note: My and Randy’s wedding photos were hand colored, 56 years ago.)  The resulting photos were fused to fabric which were then layered with batting and backing.  Clover brand ¼ inch fusible tape was placed over the edges of the photos and edge stitched in place.  This stitching also served as the quilting for the piece.

And In case you wonder, the doors pictured are as follows:

Row 1, left to right:  Texas Ranger Museum; The Browning Museum on Baylor Campus; The Palladium, an events venue on Austin Avenue, downtown

Row 2:  Original Waco High School, now loft-style apartments; Administration building on what was Paul Quinn College, now Rapaport Academy, a public charter school; The Elite, an iconic restaurant (now closed but recently purchased by Fixer Upper hosts, Chip and Joanna Gaines). Legend has it that Elvis ate there while stationed at Fort Hood.

Row 3:  East Terrace, a historic home of Waco.  There are photos of a cow on the second story balcony during a Brazos River flood; Wiley school, built as a middle school for Waco ISD, but now used for other purposes by the school district; St. Paul Episcopal Church, our church home.

Row 4:  Fire Station Door on Elm Avenue in East Waco; The entry to the courtyard next to the refurbished Hippodrome Theater on Austin Avenue, across the street from the Palladium; The Memorial Masonic Grand Lodge Temple on Columbus Avenue

And I must add a special “Thank You” to my sweet and patient Randy as I struggled to communicate my vision of this quilt so he could execute the manipulation of the images to be exactly what I needed for this challenge. He probably spent as much (or more) time on this project than I did.