Quilts stitched with color & care.

Eva has been sewing since she was ten years old, when she started teaching herself by stitching dresses for her dolls. Her mother, noticing the interest, sent her to learn from her own seamstress — and it was there that Eva picked up the patient work of hemming, of taking apart what had been sewn wrong and putting it back together right. Home economics at school filled in the foundations of a craft she'd practice for the rest of her life.

For decades she sewed clothing — her own, her daughter's and friends, even a prom dress, made from scratch. Year after year, the work accumulated: skill, fluency, the kind of eye you only get from cutting a lot of cloth - and she's still finding a way to surprise herself at the sewing table.

"I've been sewing since I was ten. Quilting is what keeps me here."

She came to quilting more recently, through a friend at the sewing class she attends at Center in the Park, in Philadelphia. Her teachers started her on hand quilting first — every stitch counted, no machine — so the hand would learn before the foot ever pressed a pedal. The discipline of it took. She is now part of two quilting classes in the city.

Quilting, she says, is what taught her real precision. Every square has to find its place; every line has to read straight. She is still excited to learn. Her work draws from her Caribbean roots and African textile traditions, improvisational piecing from her world travels, and a love of color that refuses to play it safe — and she's looking forward to it.