Innholdsfortegnelse for April - May 2016 i Quilting Arts Magazine

AS THE CALENDAR TRANSITIONS FROM WINTER INTO SPRING, SO MY FAMILY IS MOVING INTO A NEW SEASON. My middle son is transitioning from boyhood into manhood with a traditional rite of passage— learning to drive. Every weekend afternoon since he earned his permit, we’ve been practicing. Parallel parking, three-point turns, and downshifting have all been demonstrated. Safe lane changes, turn signals, and refueling have been reviewed. We’ve even taught him how to use a stick shift. And yet—no license. Let me remind you: this is not our first rodeo. We shepherded our first two offspring through this treacherous phase with minimal dents and dings. Sure, we lost a bumper or two with my eldest son, and learned the versatility of duct tape repairs with his sister, so we should be…

method #1 Chipboard is an inexpensive material that can be cut into a homemade stencil. It comes in various weights, ranging from very thin to very thick. I use .022" chipboard, the weight used to make cereal boxes. It is slightly flexible and easy to cut through. Though thick enough to use several times, chipboard stencils can’t be washed, so they won’t last as long as other options. DIRECTIONS 1. Draw a design on the chipboard with a permanent marker. Add stripes to the spaces that will be cut out. (figure 1) 2. Cut out the design with the craft knife. TIP: When cutting curves, keep the knife point down on the mat and pivot the chipboard. Th is creates a smooth curve. 3. Place the stencil on top of…

DEAR QUILTING ARTS, It’s great receiving your magazine digitally because there is no delay caused by snail mail—I live ‘down under’ in Perth, Western Australia. I noticed that you ask readers to write about new quilting ideas. I think I can say I am one of very few quilters who explore the world of geometric fractals. Searching the web reveals quilts with classic fractals such as the Sierpinski Triangle and the quilts of Rose Rushbrooke of Oregon, who creates art quilts using fractals produced with complex numbers and computer software. I design mine on grid paper by repeating geometric shapes in different scales or by following a fractal rule from a math book and adapting the result to suit patchwork. Thank you for your most enjoyable magazine. Pat Forster Perth,…

thread painting faces may seem daunting, but a basic understanding of facial features and some tips on how to stitch them will lead to success—even for a novice. Let’s consider the eye. Knowing the shapes, or geometry, of the eye helps one make sense of how to place thread to create a realistic image. The eyeball is a round sphere and the eye socket—that opening in the skull where the eyeball sits—is, basically, a rectangle with rounded corners. That is where the symmetry of the eye ends. From here on out, everything is just a bit off center. Realistic eyes When open, eyelids do not form a symmetrical shape. The curve of the upper lid is more pronounced, while the lower lid has a gentler curve. These curves are not…

At QUILTING ARTS, we celebrate contemporary art quilting, surface design, mixed media, fiber art trends, and more. We are always looking for new techniques, innovative processes, and unique approaches to the art of quilting. We’d love to hear from you! What are we looking for? • Sketchbook-inspired quilts for our Off The Page series. • Artists with inspiring portfolios of work to be featured in our In The Spotlight, Artist Profile, and Q&A articles. Show us your work and tell us your story. • Essays for “the last word” (up to 800 words). • Unique techniques, new ways to use existing tools and supplies, and ideas we’ve never featured before. • If you are teaching, blogging about, or exhibiting your art quilts, you probably have great ideas to share! How…

method #2 Freezer paper offers an opportunity to create more complex stencils. Because the stencil is ironed onto the fabric, there is no need to create connectors to each part of the stencil design. Note: I don’t find freezer paper stencils to be reusable. They usually tear when I pull them off the fabric, so I treat them as one-off designs. DIRECTIONS 1. Cut the freezer paper roughly ½ " smaller than the fabric you are printing on. For example, use an 11½ " x 11½ " piece of freezer paper for a 12" square of fabric. 2. Tape the corners of the freezer paper, shiny side down, to the cutting mat. 3. Draw a design with a permanent marker. Add stripes in the spaces that will be cut out.…

andrea Brokenshire mixes the eye of a master gardener with the joyful interpretation of a fine artist to create beautiful garden-themed quilts. Her work nearly explodes with color, depth, and dimension while portraying delicate representations of the natural world. I first saw Andrea’s quilt “Yellow Mellow in Paradise” at the International Quilt Festival, Houston. It was impossible to ignore: each vein in the flower was stitched to perfection. The light reflected off the petals, making the shadows behind the blossom even darker and more mysterious. It was a beautiful and sensitive rendition of a flower, and I immediately wanted to know more about the maker. Vivika: I’ve long been a fan of your work, especially the amazing gardenthemed pieces you create. Tell me how you got started quilting and about…

When I started quilting in high school, I was a traditional quilter—using standard patterns, working out the math and color on graph paper, and then executing the design in commercial fabric using standard piecing methods. As I became more experienced, I wanted to express myself more personally, working with more than straight-sided, pieced squares. My goal was to make curved designs, but I found it frustrating to piece rounded shapes with conventional piecing methods. So I quit piecing for the most part and started fusing my designs. I did this for years, making many awardwinning quilt designs. And yet I still wanted to piece quilts. I would look at my fused quilts and think about how they could be sewn. Something about a pieced quilt still appealed to me. I…

“I was brought into the world of quilting by accident. I was first introduced to quilting after stumbling into an impromptu show-andtell by a mom’s group at a school picnic, and quickly picked up the hobby. I learned so much from that group, and also learned piecing and more from quilting shows on TV. I even purchased a used longarm machine. But my entire world opened up with the purchase of a new longarm quilting machine. I began experimenting with designs and specialty threads. I’d always been a custom longarm machine quilter, but found I could draw with my machine like never before. I studied thread painting and machine embroidery wondering, ‘Could I create that?’ A friend helped me answer that question when she asked me to quilt two quilts…

THE DREADED QUESTION. I FEEL IT COMING. I TENSE AS I WAIT FOR IT. I KNOW IT IS COMING. It starts with an examination of the piece I am showing. The person looks carefully at my quilt. Eventually the question comes … “How long did it take you to make this quilt?” I have never been able to answer this question factually. Most of us do not keep a time sheet in our studios to log time in and time out. We never really know. We need to include the time we have spent shopping for materials, gathering supplies, creating a concept, and preparing a place to work. Busy artists are often balancing another job, a family, or other obligations. All of these responsibilities enter into the time we have…

Lea McComas is an international award-winning fiber artist, author, and teacher who has developed threadpainting techniques for rendering realistic pictorial works. The author of Thread-Painted Portraits: Turn Your Photos Into Fiber Art, she has appeared on TheQuiltShow.com, Quilt It!, and “Quilting Arts TV.” Residing near Boulder, Colorado, she teaches both internationally and online at craftonlineuniversity.com. leamccomas.com Lynn Krawczyk is a surface design artist from Plymouth, Michigan, who applies paint to fabric to express her personal vision. She has written for Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper ScissorsR magazines, appeared on “Quilting Arts TV,” and has three Quilting Arts Workshop™ videos: “Print Design Compose,” “Color Theory Made Easy,” and “Thermofax Screen Printing Essentials.” Lynn is the author of Intentional Printing: Simple Techniques For Inspired Fabric Art. smudgedtextilesstudio.com Susan Edmonson is an award-winning…

CARKAI Carkai—a word invented by designer Carolyn Friedlander—is a playful collection. The 28 fabrics in the collection tell four color stories—Malibu, Blush, Petunia, and Shale—that all play well together. The prints range from large-scale to geometric to linear designs and will add organic texture to any project. robertkaufman.com “HMONG STORY CLOTHS: PRESERVING HISTORICAL & CULTURAL TREASURES” BY LINDA A. GERDNER Lovers of cloth and history will be bowled over by this visually stunning, well-researched book. After an introduction about the Hmong people, their needlework traditions, and examples of embroidered hats, clothing, and accessories, Dr. Gerdner traces the history of story cloths from the Hmong in Laos from 1977-2005. Without a written language, Hmong stories were shared verbally and also on cloth. Some of the examples in the book—while beautiful—are quite…

method #3 If you aren’t keen on the idea of cutting your own stencils, there are many ready-to-use ones on the market—and numerous ways to print with them. Here are two methods. DIRECTIONS Dye spray painting Using very fluid paint or dye with a commercial stencil produces am interesting wash-like print. I use Tumble Dye that comes ready-to-use in a spray bottle. TIP: The spray may be unpredictable so protect a wide area around your work surface with plastic sheeting or large fabric scraps. Wear gloves. 1. Place a commercial stencil on the fabric. Spritz the sprayable dye over the stencil. Repeat until you have the coverage you like. 2. Move the stencil and spray additional dye on the fabric. (figure 7) TIP: Dye will build up on the surface…

Spring is a time of opportunity. Gardens are waking up from winter naps, loved ones are graduating and transitioning into stages of their lives, new life springs up from nests and ponds, and there is hope of warmer days to come. Everyone and everything seems to be wiping off the cobwebs, going somewhere, transforming. In the October/November 2015 issue, we challenged readers to create an 8" × 8" art quilt on the theme of “Going Places.” Almost 100 readers participated, showing us how they were reshaping things, what they saw in nature that exemplified transition, what fresh opportunities they were pursuing, and how they were moving on. We hope you enjoy this gallery of our readers’ artwork! “Any Way the Wind Blows” PAMELA ROBERTS • CAROLINA, RHODE ISLAND “My quilt…

i love birds. Since I was little, I have picked up feathers and birds’ nests when they fell out of trees. Over the years, I began to study the nests and grew to appreciate the precision needed to weave a tiny bed for a precious egg and hatchling. These days I create my own nests with fabric and stitches. I developed methods for making nests by both hand and with my sewing machine. My nests are used to embellish crazy quilts and small art quilts, or as three-dimensional elements on my fabric books. FOR THE MACHINE-SEWN NEST MATERIALS General supplies used for both nests • Light-colored marking pencil (I use General’sR MultiPastelR chalk pencils in gray, blue, or pink or PrismacolorR silver artist pencils.) • Small feathers For the machine-sewn…