Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2017 i Quilting Arts Magazine

JOIN US FOR THE COUNTRY’S LARGEST QUILT SHOW! SEE more than 1,500 great quilts and fiber art works in scores of exhibits! SHOP at more than 1,100 booths! LEARN in classes for all skill levels! FREE demos and educational exhibits. JUST SOME OF THE EXHIBITS INCLUDE: A Celebration of Color • Between Me and the World: Identify and Activism in Quilts • Breaking the Surface • Creative Stitching • Danny Amazonas • Hands All Around • HERstory • In Full Bloom • In the American Tradition: Applique • In the American Tradition: Pieced • Made in New Mexico • Meanderings of a Quilt Collector • Modern Quilt Guild • My Wearable Art Journey So Far • Nine Voices from One • Pioneer Quilt • Rising Stars • SAQA: Textile Posters…

Ana Buzzalino is a fiber artist and quilt instructor living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Ana has been teaching a variety of quilting techniques for over 25 years. Her recent work focuses on surface design, such as fabric dyeing, rubbings, stampings, and monoprinting. She is a frequent contributor to Quilting Arts, has appeared on “Quilting Arts TV,” and has two Quilting Arts Workshop™ videos, “Machine Stitching and Painting Quilts” and “Quilting and Dyeing Serendipity.” anabuzzalino.com Karen L. Caswell is a fiber artist who loves intricate freemotion quilting, fabric painting and dyeing, abstract compositions, and oodles of bold color. When she is not in her studio or teaching art quilt classes, she can be found in her garden, walking in the forest, or collecting sea glass on the beach. Abby Glassenberg is…

Starting in prehistoric times, through the Renaissance, and into the present era, ocher pigments have been commonly used. In France, the industrial process for making ocher pigments was developed by the French scientist Jean-Etienne Astier in the 1780s. He came to Roussillon, in Provence, and was fascinated by the cliffs of yellow and red clay. Thanks to his process, ocher pigments could be exported across Europe and around the world. During a holiday in Provence, France some years ago, I visited the ocher mines in Roussillon and bought some pigments with the idea of trying them on fabric. Once home, I started to play with them and I was fascinated by the intensity of their colors. Middle Eastern countries and their archeological sites have always attracted my artistic imagination, and…

text, script, calligraphy, letters, and numbers in all fonts, shapes, and forms are things that I am instantly attracted to. I often cut font samples from magazines and papers and paste them into a sketchbook for future reference. At this point I have a wide variety of letterforms and phrases that have caught my attention. It seemed like a natural thing to add text to my work using free-motion quilting. As I began trying this, one piece of artwork would make me think, “What if …” As I explored that thought, it gave way to even more “what ifs.” And, well—you get the idea. In this article I’ll share with you some of my experiments with free-motion text and what worked for me. I encourage you to explore your own…

Creativity springs from all different kinds of places, but often a need for innovation drives amazing works. Think of Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, Isaac Singer of the Singer sewing machine, and Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of DuPont™ Kevlar®. For this challenge, we are asking you to create an environment of necessity for yourself. Make a quilt that uses nothing new—don’t purchase anything! Dig into your collection of fabric, vintage ephemera, up-cycled notions, and more. Beg, borrow, and steal—and use your imagination with unconventional materials. We can’t wait to see what you devise! Join other fellow QUILTING ARTS readers and create an art quilt based on the theme, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” Share your quilt with us and we’ll publish a sampling of reader’s artwork in the…

WHEN SHE WASN’T BUSY MAKING HER OWN HOUSEDRESSES OR DOZENS OF APRONS AND PIES FOR CHURCH BAZAARS, my maternal grandmother was quilting. Grandma and Grandpa’s living room was often completely taken over by a gigantic handmade quilting frame set up with Grandma’s scrap quilts. As children, my siblings and I enjoyed scooting under the quilts and pretending to camp. At home, we were accustomed to the sounds of my mom’s shears as she cut out quilt blocks or clothing patterns. The hum of her sewing machine serenaded us to sleep almost every night. A dedicated seamstress and quilter, she made sure her five children all had homemade quilts on their beds, and custom, handmade clothing to wear. While I may not have fully appreciated her efforts at the time, I…

TRAVEL. SPREAD YOUR WINGS. TRY SOMETHING NEW. WHO IS YOUR IDEAL TRAVEL BUDDY? MINE IS MY SISTER. SINCE WE WERE KIDS, WE’VE SHARED A LOVE OF TRAVEL. It all started in the back seat of our parents’ Chevy Suburban as we took road trips up and down the East Coast. One of us would scour the AAA map for our next pit stop while the other initiated a game of I Spy or 50 Questions. We went to museums, explored campgrounds, ate bags of M&M’s®, and bickered over who had to squeeze into the middle seat next to our brother. Those are fun memories. Eventually we graduated to more exotic travel on our own, but we always sent each other postcards on every trip. “Wish you were here” was a…

this is the final installment of the “Shifting into Neutral” series, and there is still more to discover. In the previous article we mixed various proportions of both warm and cool primaries to achieve a wide range of neutral colors. This article will extend the concept of what a neutral might be by creating a similar primary mix and then adding black or brown. Remember there are many different black dyes, each having a slightly different color cast. Not all black dyes are created equal. For this exercise we will be working with Procion MX Jet Black—one of the deepest black dyes available. MATERIALS • Soda ash • 2 gallon bucket • Dyes: ProcionR MX fiber reactive dyes NOTE: I recommend both the warm and cool primaries (Chinese Red, Royal…

Whether by common idioms or their own sayings, our readers were inspired to create amazing art pieces for the “Words of Wisdom” Reader Challenge. We loved reading all of your sayings and seeing your quilts. From somber to playful, entries spanned the gamut of sage words— all appropriate in their own time and place. Please enjoy these words of wisdom, and this gallery of our readers’ work! “Seas the Day” (left) SANDI BOND • SHUBENACADIE, NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA “This quilt, based on a photograph of my daughter on a Prince Edward Island beach, depicts a young woman taking time out of her hectic day to enjoy life and have fun. The title of the quilt, ‘Seas the Day,’ pays homage to Canada’s beautiful oceans as well as the reminder that…

“My grandmother, Martha, gave me three special gifts: her name, her grand piano, and her handbag filled with costume jewelry. I never met my grandmother. She exited this world a month before I made my entrance, a case of very poor timing on my part. Based on descriptions from friends and family, I know I would have adored her. They all agree: Martha was a gem of a soul—strong, brilliant, and beautiful. Perhaps the hours I spent as a little girl playing with Martha’s rhinestones instilled in me a love of light and color. But there’s no doubt that my fascination with sparkling color prompted me to ask why the image of a gemstone that randomly arrived in my mailbox in 1991 couldn’t be made into a quilt. At the…

i love creating a series of small art quilts. The reduced size allows me to work quickly and develop ideas that have been rattling around in my brain—so it is much easier for me to see what works and what doesn’t. Once these small works were quilted, I wanted to find a way to finish and hang them so that they could have a physical presence—and not leave the viewer asking me why there are potholders on the wall. In exploring the options, one idea was to mat and frame the quilts under glass. This option can be pricey, and the glass interfered with the tactile nature of fiber art. Another option involved sewing the mini quilt onto a gallery-wrapped canvas purchased from an art supply store. This looked great,…

“Somewhere Between” PAULETTE LANDERS • RAINIER, OREGON 39" x 41" “I walk in the space between—neither reality nor dream. It bridges intangibility and discovery where vision meets creativity. Anything and everything becomes possibility.” Cotton, dyes, paints; fused collage, hand dyed, painted, stamped, machine stitched. “Layered Voices” is a collection of quilts that reflect a shared sense of humanity at this moment in time. As artists, we pay attention to our surroundings, identify patterns, and make connections that evolve into visual narratives of experience. In this sense, art is a mirror. Transformative processes brought about by natural forces, politics, social interactions, emotional states, and spiritual convictions were recurring themes in many artist statements. It became apparent that an exploration of the nature of time—particularly as it relates to the environment, memory,…

“A couple times in my life the different parts of my background—my education and work—have happily merged. For example, my educational background was in Scandinavian Studies, but my work life was in travel and sports marketing. Those two things remained unrelated until the Olympic Winter Games were held in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994. My language training and my marketing work finally met, and I was delighted. I have a deep relationship with my Norwegian background. I keep close touch with relatives, and grew up with Norwegian traditions, foods, language, and music. As I studied art and languages in school and in Norway, I developed a keen interest in Viking art and modern Scandinavian design. Now, I am incorporating these into my current work as an art quilter. A favorite artist…

the story of the making of this quilt began when I took Jane LaFazio’s watercolor journaling class at Craft Napa in 2016. In July of that year I spent nine days on Mount Desert Island, Maine. I needed a vacation destination relatively close to Boston, Massachusetts, as we were meeting family flying in from England. Bar Harbor, Maine, had been on my radar for a number of years. Upon further research, I learned about Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park. It seemed like the perfect location for an old-fashioned family holiday where we could explore, hike, and eat seafood. In October, I had a quilt challenge titled “Journeys” to complete. Then it came to me: I would use the art journaling skills I practiced while I was in Maine…

try your hand at fabric collage and photo transfer to create your own mixed-media art quilt. By transferring a black-and-white inkjet print onto a fabric collage, the colors and textures of the fabric will shine through the simplified image. Finish your mini quilt by adding texture with hand or machine quilting and a distinctive edge-finishing technique. MATERIALS Finished Size: 12" x 12" quilt collage • Assorted light- to medium-value fabric scraps or painted papers (extremely dark colors won’t work) • Paper-backed fusible web (I used Steam-A-SeamR.) • Black-and-white inkjet image printed on regular copy paper. Newspaper print and other non-glossy text or images will also work. • Gel medium • Plastic drop cloth • Batting and backing, each 15" x 15" • Hand sewing supplies: large-eye needle, floss, and perle…

my first exposure to fiber arts was hand stitching. I remember being in awe as I watched people stitch—not only because of the beautiful work they made, but also because of the calm and serenity they exuded. Hand stitching has become a form of meditation for me, a place to rest my mind after a long day and to connect with my creative spirit. This art form fascinates me because it is as beautiful using utilitarian stitches as it is using complicated and ornate designs. I lean more toward utilitarian stitches. I love the simplicity and that something so common can create something so beautiful. I often use simple embroidery in my work as the sole source of surface design. Many distinctive forms of embroidery such as kantha quilting and…