Rose and Jason

Rose and Jason are a set of quilts intended to hang as a diptych.

Rose is an amputee with a mechanical leg, a steam-powered dog, and a really big gun, but she still has to look good when going into battle. Style is just as important as weaponry in the steampunk genre, especially for privateers like Rose and Jason.

Jason is Rose's boyfriend and the captain of his steam-powered airship. He's confident and cocky, and his pet raven, Jacques, is a bit too smart for his own good!

Rose was my very first steampunk quilt and the first fantasy character of my own creation. She's part pin-up, part privateer, part steampunk, and part art nouveau. I was fresh off my high from creating Link, and I wanted to make another character, but one from my own imagination so the full copyright would be mine. Rose was born from a combination of my imaginings on pirates, pin-up models, steampunk in general, and Alphonse Mucha's art nouveau artwork.

Jason's uniform is a combination of several historical uniforms. I pulled my references heavily from 18th century French and British naval officer outfits.

I had fun addapting our modern, romanticized ideas about pirates to my burgeoning steampunk world, albeit with a few changes: No self-respecting pirate captain is complete without an avian companion or a treasure chest. I liked the idea of a raven much better than a parrot, especially one with a clockwork wing, so I came up with Jacques. The treasure chest also has a distinct mechanical feel.

This blog post documents how I created Rose.

Awards & Exhibitions

Although Rose did make the rounds through some exhibitions, I retired her from competition once I completed Jason. Jason never exhibited publicly, either on his own or as a diptych with Rose. The following list of exhibitions are for Rose only.