Art Quilts at Play

Here's the big, exciting news! I've been living this project for the last 18 months and I can finally share. Elin Waterston and I have written a new book, Art Quilts at Play, for C&T Publishing, to be released in January 2009.

This new book is a perfect complement to our first book, Art Quilt Workbook, and covers a plethora of surface design techniques and special effects on fabric. The book is full of illustrated how-tos, many, many samples from the different processes and oodles of finished art. Once we've shown you how to create and alter some beautiful fabric, we give you scads of ideas of what to do with it, from challenges and trades to collaborations and more. Our first book was based on an in-depth, comprehensive class that we'd been teaching. This new one also draws on workshops plus the techniques we each use in our own art.

Over a year ago we asked a small number of very talented women in the art quilt and mixed-media world to contribute some pieces to our book and they very generously agreed. Their work enriches the material and shows you how different artists with different voices and different techniques approach the same themes or materials with exciting, original and unique results. We're so grateful to each of them for their contributions.

Natalya Aikens
Woodie Anderson
Liz Berg
Gail Ellspermann
Janet Ghio
Rayna Gillman
Terry Grant
Kathryn Hunter
Andrea Jenkins
Jane LaFazio
Mati McDonough
Tricia McKellar
Kim Rae Nugent
Karen Stiehl Osborn
Virginia Spiegel
Beryl Taylor

A few of our students were also asked and graciously agreed to share their work with us. We are so thankful to them for their generosity (and in a couple of cases, their bravery as well!)

There will be a big release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21st and we hope you can join us!

You can pre-order an autographed copy of the book now by contacting me. We're so pleased with the response to our first book and hope that you'll like this one just as much.

Quilting Arts Workshop

Last March I was invited to go to Stow, MA to tape a workshop for Quilting Arts. The taping was held in a big, beautiful barn at the Bolton family alpaca farm. The paddock was full of baby alpaca, called cria. Aren't they sweet?





In the workshop, I show you how to make a One-Page Book out of fabric, using a wide variety of mixed media techniques, including stampmaking, antiquing, water soluble wax pastels and image transfers. This book is pretty cool because each page is the size of an Artist Trading Card and it's a lot of fun to work with a theme. My theme was insects, quel surprise!



Also taping their own workshops the same day was the inestimable Leslie Riley



And my intrepid co-author, Elin Waterston



(Which reminds me - a BIG announcement is coming soon. Stay tuned!)

I received a preview copy of my workshop yesterday and boy, did I pack a lot of info into 51 minutes! The workshop is available as a download or a dvd from Quilting Arts. Here's a preview:



Quilting Arts has quite a few workshops available and they all look so tempting! What a great way to learn a new technique without leaving home. No need to pack up and schlep all of your stuff anywhere, instead bring a teacher home with you for a personal lesson, then pause and re-play any part of it to your heart's content. What a fantastic idea - the folks at Quilting Arts are brilliant.

Fiber Book in Denver

Do you remember the fiber house I built back in May? Well, I took it apart and turned it into a fiber book and entered into the Interweavings show at the Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, Colorado.



I had intended to assemble the book accordion-style so that it could still be assembled as a four-square house, but discovered that the sides and the front and back needed to have been exactly the same width for that to have worked. Another lesson learned. I am really pleased with it as a book however.



The artists reception is tonight, to coincide with the beginning of the Democratic National Convention. Hopefully the conventioneers will be out wandering the arts district during the week and get a chance to see all of the great exhibits in Denver.



INTERWEAVINGS
August 1 - September 13, 2008

Abecedarian Gallery
910 Santa Fe Drive • Unit #101 • Denver, CO • 80204 • 303.534.1038

It Takes a Village

As promised, here is the rest of the village of fabric houses.

Julie's is a treehouse with a cup of tea in every room.
2 Petit Treeanon, Julie Saviano



Mary Gay's house celebrates her family and pets.
99 Keeler Lane, Mary Gay Leahy



Nancy's depicts her second home on the coast of Maine.
545 Blueberry Hill, Nancy Mirman



My sister, Linda, was inspired by the words of her favorite authors.
1821 Textual Way, Linda Oehler-Marx



I love this interior wall in Linda's house. There are pictures of our mom and grandma and an appropriate sentiment about knitting (both Linda and our mom are knit-fiends and our grandma used to be) plus a warning that I'm next to learn to knit. I told her that when I'm 82 and we're in adjoining rooms in an old folks' home then, and only then, can she teach me to knit.


If you'd like to try a fiber house of your own here are some things to think about:

The opportunity exists for a very allegorical approach to a theme of home. While you can create a literal interpretation of “home” and your memories of it, you can also use the inside/outside aspect of the construcion as a chance to explore:

a vision of what home can be
an interpretation of self
a memory, fantasy, dream or imaginary home
hidden/revealed thoughts using symbolism and personal imagery
a specific room: a studio, a kitchen, a garden room, a library
a journal or story house
a tribute to an artist or writer
a chronology of family
a house as a character in a story

Again, the inspiration for our challenge was the book, In This House by Angela Cartwright & Sarah Fishburn, Quarry Books, July 2007

A cool preview of the houses in the book can be found on Angela's website.

13 Nightingale Lane

Ta da! Here's the completed house. Every year I issue the women who work in our shop a challenge. We've had some interesting ones -- collaborative journals, based on art movements, using found objects, etc. This year the challenge was inspired by Angela Cartwright's book In This House. We each made a house out of fabric with either batting or Fast2Fuse inside the walls. There are five houses on display at the Country Quilter during the Northern Star Quilter's show this weekend. They are all different and all wonderful.








13 Nightingale Lane

I plan to disassemble the house after the show and make it into a fiber book, probably with grommets at the sides. That way I can store it flat and still open it up into a 3D house. Now I have to think of something for a new challenge.