Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2025 i Quilting Arts Magazine

Mel Beach is an award-winning and fun-loving fiber artist who loves to create through play every day. Mel thrives on stretching her creativity through dice rolling, 100-day projects, and quilt challenges. Her lectures, workshops, creative playdates, and blog are designed to inspire others to create with joy. melbeachquilts.com Jane Davila is a fiber artist, printmaker, and designer in coastal Connecticut. Most days she can be found working from her loft studio in a renovated corset factory—a magical place of color, light, and 100 years-worth of pins in the floorboards. janedavila.com Ana Buzzalino is a fiber and mixed-media artist, surface designer, teacher, and lecturer whose work is defined by layers, texture, and a deep connection to history. Her creative process blends traditional and contemporary surface design techniques, resulting in pieces that feel…

THE CHERRYWOOD CHALLENGE is an annual art quilt contest hosted by Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics®. Each year hundreds of entrants create an original design using a limited palette within a particular theme, resulting in a 20” x 20” art quilt. The quilts are then juried into traveling exhibits comprising 225 quilts that visit quilt shows and galleries around the country and even internationally. The Poppy Challenge is the ninth contest and features quilts from 44 U.S. states, five Canadian provinces, Europe, Japan, and Australia. FIRST PLACE A Salute of Honor MICHELLE POPHAL • BRAINTREE, MASSACHUSETTS “As memories fade and time passes, we still pay homage to those who came before us. Poppies are known worldwide as a symbol of remembrance, explicitly in regards to veterans and honoring their service. Poppies have…

in a world that often feels rushed and noisy, hand stitching offers a welcome invitation to slow down. While machine stitching provides speed and precision, the addition of hand stitching allows for a deeper, more intimate connection with the piece. It adds texture, introduces delicate shifts in color, and refines a design with thoughtful, intentional marks. The contrast between the efficiency of the machine and the organic, tactile nature of hand-sewn stitches creates a rich visual and physical depth—one that invites the eye to linger and the hands to explore. There is something uniquely satisfying about watching a piece evolve stitch by stitch. With hand stitching, no two stitches are exactly alike, which adds warmth and individuality to the work. The human touch is evident in every variation, every tiny…

4 COMMON CORNERS (4CC) is an invitational group of fiber artists drawn together by their immersion in the unique beauty of the four corners region of southwest United States—Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Members bring their divergent viewpoints and artistic styles together to create cohesive, thematically linked art exhibitions featuring the uniqueness of this region and celebrating each member as an individual artist. The beauty of the region relies heavily on the amazing geology of the Colorado Plateau and surrounding mountains. The high deserts, scattered forests, striking rock formations, and blue skies so characteristic of the region often serve as inspiration for artists in the region. In this themed challenge, 4CC artists were asked to reflect on this geography, creating artwork that both literally and figuratively “rocks!” Bisbee Copper…

Submit today and become part of the QUILTING ARTS family Now that you’ve experienced our latest issue, isn’t it time for you to become part of QUILTING ARTS? What do you want to read—how about writing it yourself! Share your inspiring work, unique techniques, and new ideas with us and our readers. If you are teaching, blogging about, or exhibiting your art quilts, we want to hear from you! To submit, send us a short summary of your idea along with three images to the email below and we’ll get back to you within 12 weeks. Visit quiltingdaily.com/quilting-arts-magazine-submission-guidelines for our submissions guidelines and tips for creating a proposal. Questions? Email QAsubmissions@goldenpeakmedia.com.…

Our Readers Respond! In the Spring 2025 issue, we challenged readers to create a new art quilt or share an existing one that included or was inspired by words. This prompt was a popular one! Here are a few selections from the many letters and photos we received from our readers. Thank you for sharing your work with us. “My Platinum Playlist” celebrates Black female singers who have left a lasting melody in my life. To create this quilt, the names of my favorite female artists were printed on fabric—using different fonts for variety—and appliquéd on the quilt using a satin stitch. The list ranges from icons of yesteryear to the 2023 Grammy winner for New Artist. The genres include gospel, jazz, pop, and soul. Their songs mirror the sheet…

rust dyeing is a creative way to add rich, organic pattern to fabric using metal and oxidation. The process is simple yet produces stunning results, making it perfect for beginners and experienced textile artists alike. Whether layering, rolling, or folding and clamping with metal, rust dyeing transforms fabric into something unique and unexpected. I first learned this technique in a class presented by my surface design group, and it quickly became a favorite. The unpredictability of rust—combined with its ability to create organic patterns and rich, earthy tones—made it an exciting way to work with fabric. What started as an experiment soon became an ongoing exploration of rust. So, let’s gather the supplies, embrace the unexpected, and explore rust dyeing! DIRECTIONS This fun and creative process can be very messy,…

gel plate printing is a fun technique, especially—but not only—for beginners. You can create amazing improvisational works of art for cards or small textile paintings—and it is quick and fun! The great news is that you don’t need a lot of expensive materials—just a gel printing plate (there are several sizes you can buy), acrylic paint, a brayer, and a drawing pad or small pieces of fabric. I include many suggestions of objects you can use as stencils or stamps and that you certainly have in or around your house or outdoors. I will show you how to make colorful backgrounds and textured pages—perfect to use in collages or larger artwork, to frame as a small work of art, or quilted into a textile-painted mini art quilt. I use paper…

QUILTING ARTS MAGAZINE is celebrating 25 years of publication! Starting with the Winter 2026 issue, you’ll see a gallery of finalist challenge quilts displayed in our pages—and the challenge will be to use silver metallic elements in your work. What a fun way to celebrate our silver anniversary! We know our readers are a creative bunch, so the sky’s the limit … using your skills, some silver elements, and lessons learned from past issues of QUILTING ARTS, show us what art quilting means to you. Celebrate this milestone with us by taking a browse through old issues to find your favorite techniques or be inspired by Mel Beach’s article on page 10! Show us how far you’ve come in your own art quilting journey with help from QUILTING ARTS. How…

In the Winter of 2001, Pokey Bolton, founder and editor-in-chief, and Quilting Arts LLC published the first issue of Quilting Arts Magazine from a small office in Stow, Massachusetts. Yes, 25 years ago! In the upcoming Winter issue, we will begin celebrating our 25th year of bringing art quilting to you, our dear readers. We have many special things planned for our silver anniversary and we want to begin with you! Please help us celebrate by telling us—in 150 words or less—how Quilting Arts has influenced your art practice. Yes, that small word count may be challenging but we want to feature as many of you as we can. If you have a photo of artwork you have made based on a technique you learned from Quilting Arts, please share…

i love landscapes and am constantly inspired by the beauty around me. I take lots of photos for quilting inspiration while I’m outside—in fact, I have enough photos (and fabric) to be inspired for the rest of my life! I also love the challenge of using leftover scraps to create new pieces and so I keep a few scrap jars and a basket of larger remnants handy whenever I’m sewing. Last summer, I drove from Texas to Boston to spend the summer with my son. The nice thing about traveling by car is the extra room for sewing supplies. I took my sewing machine and thread case, hand-embroidery thread, and a box of favorite fabrics and scraps from my stash. When you have limited space to work and leftover fabric…

In addition to the paint pens already described, there is a plethora of fun tools you may want to try for embellishing your art quilts. The vendor floor of a major quilt show is a wonderful place to see, touch, and often try out many of these products, which are all available online. • Fabric ink pens are one of my most-used tools. Applied before or after quilting—the ink will not affect your machine—they add color without changing the surface texture. Most suggest pressing with a very warm iron to set the colors so it is best to check the manufacturer’s instructions. • Fabric ink in bottles are also available; I recommend buying a bottle of white as this is the one important color not found in pens. Of course, you may…

NARRATIVE TEXTILES: TELL YOUR STORY IN MIXED MEDIA AND STITCH AILISH HENDERSON “We all have our own life stories or those we make up for ourselves. How can we use these as the ignition to produce textile art or mixed-media outcomes?” This is the challenge author and artist Ailish Henderson sets forth at the beginning of her book published by Batsford Books. This is a unique idea book that takes a pleasant stroll through the art life of this charming, multidisciplined artist. Ailish shares the pages with a guest list of simpatico artists and their work, all as introspective and delightful as she is. Sprinkled with reflection, stories, and her own creative musing, Ailish shares her personal journey in textile art to connect with and inspire others. $34.95 • batsfordbooks.com…

in the Winter 2025 issue, we gave readers carte blanche to create a themed quilt using whatever inspiration and materials helped them interpret the phrase ‘Slice of Life.’ Oh, and we wanted them to show off their skills and creativity plus make a 6" × 12" quilt in portrait orientation—not too much to ask, was it? Apparently not! We were impressed by all of the entries we received and, as usual, selecting this group was its own challenge. We hope you are inspired by this gallery of readers’ work. Enjoy! In My Garden HOLLIE BARON • CHESTERFIELD, VIRGINIA Gardening is a deeply therapeutic experience for me, offering a peaceful escape where the mind can unwind and the spirit can find solace. The simple act of tending to plants brings a…

I have been I through many challenges and sorrows but I’m still here, world, and I want to share how quilting presented a guiding light for me to follow. Maybe it can help you too. Who would’ve thought I’d be so immersed in quilting? To be honest, I’m obsessed with it! My good friend Nancy warned me, “Tonya, quilting is not a cheap adventure!” She was right, an adventure it is and, for me, a lifeboat. Let me give you the CliffsNotes® version of my life over the last 4½ years. First, COVID-19 hit! I’m a phlebotomist and have worked two jobs for years—so I was an essential worker. I contracted COVID, which put me in ICU for three weeks fighting for my life due to many complications. In total,…