The quilt images are created with silkscreen, fabric paint, blockprint and transfer inks. The surface of the quilt is embellished with fabric paint and commercial or handpainted ribbons. The quilt uses machine appliqué skills and is machine quilted.

Kathleen Deneris says : "Measuring Up is a quilt about perfect little girls and their beautiful fashion dolls. To be beautiful, too, they must measure up . . . measure their calories, measure their bust, their waist, their hips their fingernails.  They must measure their legs, their feet, their liquids, their hair.  They must measure their weight, their height, their bone density, their relationships.  They must measure their sparkle, their glow, their chances, their life. Women are so good with measurements, they ought to be good at mathematics."

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Design and execution Jean Ray Laury
Machine quilting Susan Smeltzer
Jean Ray is the most prominent and influential of the early modern quiltmakers. She was a pioneer in the use of silk-screened images on quilts 

 Drawn, then printed with quick screen and other silk screen methods.   Details and lettering were Thermofaxed.  Some areas were hand painted and drawn.  All are on cotton fabric.  Machine pieced and quilted.  Paints used for printing: Versatex textile paints. Versatex also thinned to water-color consistency for hand painting.  Permanent markers for linear patterns.

Quilters”S.O.S.-Save Our Stories Project
Interview #73.1 Jean Ray Laury
Interviewer:  Le Rowell
International Quilt Festival, Houston, Texas
November 2, 2000

Jean Ray Laury: I’ve always kind of had the impression that maybe my quilts were never going to be appropriate for a museum…  Now I’ve changed my mind somewhat, maybe museums are more open to quiltmaking.  Of course, it’ll be a while, I think, before quilts are really accepted in the way paintings are… But recently I sold a quilt to a museum and it was one called Listen To Your Mother.  It’s a very personal kind of quilt, it’s funny, it’s about women and it’s about the kinds of comments that you heard from your mother or from your grandmother and then one day you hear them being passed on to your kids; and probably if you stuck around you’d hear them being passed on to grandchildren… I love including words in my quilts, statements and comments.  This one is one of the “Listen to Your Mother” quilts, and you’ll all remember some of these… “Watch out, you’re going to poke somebody’s eye out with that thing” and “Put that down you don’t know where its been.”  All those admonishments that are “for your own good”.  You know that, but they still come off as parental advice.  There’s something kind of universal in that.

Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories ProjectInterview #MD-02, Katharine Brainard Interviewers: Le Rowell and Bernard Herman

Bethesda, Maryland

August 6, 2001

“I think that now I’m heading less to text and explicit narrative and more into a universal narrative – I want to be able to make art that people will look at and understand from a gut level no matter what language they speak, sort of a universal kind of theme.   That’s what I’m looking for now where you could read a story into a quilt, whether you know the story or not.   Well, it’s always been what the viewer brings to it…I would like even more for the people to bring their own thoughts to it, to be able to stand in front of it and have it pull something out of them.”

From the artist about this quilt:

“What is “going crazy” anyway?   What does it feel like?   How close is the line between creativity and madness, and who draws that line?   Does the definition of “crazy” change as society changes?   Can the label of “crazy” be used as a punishment to keep in line those that step out of bounds?

Crazy Quilt depicts a person “going crazy,” crazy like a star that burns up its vital energy as it falls from the sky.   The pieced background and beaded embroidery draw on the traditional “crazy quilt” techniques.    The black and white coloring choice represents polarization of thinking, when one can’t see “the grays,” or all the colors actually present in reality.”

Collection of the artist 

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 Commercial and vintage fabrics and materials: satins, velvets, silks, wools, cashmere, linens, cottons, polyesters, blends, netting, lace, doilies, glass buttons, ribbons, and perle cotton and metallic embroidery threads; hand appliquéd, hand embroidered, machine pieced, and hand quilted.

 Quilters’ S.O.S. – Save Our Stories Project
Interview #CO-1 Ellen Danforth
Interviewer:  Bernard Herman
Via correspondence April-December 2001 

Ellen Danforth:  The idea for this quilt came to me as I was nearing my 40^th birthday.  I didn’t start its construction, however, until nearly five years later; I finished it just before my 46^th birthday… I wanted to celebrate my “coming of age” –at age 40 instead of 18.  I chose to work in the technique and style of a Victorian crazy quilt because I wanted to express a sense of myself that I had repressed.  The slow process of making the quilt by hand was not unlike the process of self-discovery.  The butterflies in the chemise represent my transformation and my ability to grow after a period of inertness and effort.

 This quilt is also a “visual conversation” that I had with my husband of twenty years. It was the best way I could find to express myself to him on a subject that I found difficult to speak about. 

I also wanted to make a comment on how hard it is in our society for women to be sensual but not provocative, shocking, crass, or inappropriate.  For many women it’s easier to abdicate responsibility for this kind of self-discovery. We argue that there is never a good time to do it; we’re either too young or too old. And I wanted to show how silly this is; a sense of humor is a good way to become less self-conscious. 

Finally, I was thinking of my daughters.  Our eldest was approaching age 18 during the (5 year) construction of the quilt, and our youngest, 10 at the time, was approaching puberty.   I wanted my quilt to be an invitation to them to begin their own process of self discovery.  And I wanted to give them an image of female sensuality that was different from that of the current pop culture in which they are coming of age… all of the materials in my quilt were “found” (except for the lingerie and the velvet in the borders which I purchased) from four generations of women in my family… I wanted my daughters to feel both a connectedness to these women and a sense of possibility for themselves that the older generations, I believe, never felt.

This New York Beauty is exceptional mainly because of its use of color. Most New York Beauties are made from solid, not printed fabrics, adding to their graphic "pow. This one, on indigo, jumps out and engages the viewer immediately. It is bold, clear, and patriotic. Originally the light brown color throughout the quilt was a deep blue-green. Fugitive dyes caused this color to fade in a large number of mid nineteenth-century quilts.  Collection of William Volckening

This original rendition of a traditional nineteenth century pattern looks much like a flock of birds flying off into the night. The maker achieved the effect by using bright red wool triangles set against a dark wool suiting fabric background .It was designed for everyday use but was made with a creative eye  and  the result is a handsome unorthodox work of art, displaying bold, abstract designs closely resembling modern art.

Collection of Shelly Zegart

Sunday, April 30,1939 was the opening day of the New York World’s Fair. Its theme was “The World of Tomorrow”, dedicated to the blessings of democracy and the wonders of technology. Its emblems were the 700-foot needlelike Trylon and the 200-foot globe the Perisphere. Bold modern architecture glowing with color was the order of the day. Outside the fair gates the nation’s and the world’s problems were far from resolved.

 This quilt was made and designed for The 1939 World’s Fair Contest sponsored by Good Housekeeping and R.H. Macy’s department store.

 The quiltmaker adeptly captured the Fair’s message, incorporating both the emblems of the fair and a modernized Art Deco version of the architecture of the New York skyline. 

Collection of  Shelly Zegart