Quilting Arts Magazine October - November 2016

I was talking with friends recently, lamenting the subtle changes this past year has brought to my reflection. As one who is squarely in the middle of “middle age,” I knew these changes were bound to appear sooner or later. Crow’s feet, I’ve been expecting you . . . and you are a welcome visitor. My friend mentioned that her hair had turned from silver to white this year, while another chimed in that hers had mysteriously transformed to red (with a little help from her hairdresser). I like to think the lines which appear around my eyes and mouth are as much from smiling as they are from aging. And let’s face it, it is better to smile and accept the passage of time than to grimace at the thought…

DEAR QUILTING ARTS, I especially enjoyed Kathy Kerstetter’s article, “Lessons Learned from an Art Collaboration,” in the June/July issue because a group of four friends and I worked on a very similar project over the past nine months. In the summer of 2015, Cathy Reininger, a member of our fiber art group, Southern Fiber Artists, asked if anyone would be interested in participating in a group quilt. She’d enlarged a photograph of the Mississippi Agricultural Museum in Jackson, divided the photograph into five 24" x 36" sections (approximately), and printed copies for folks to work with. Once the dust settled, five of us took home an image from the same landscape, and thus began our collaboration on the quilt, “Mississippi Ag Museum in Bloom.” We agreed on many things—as Kathy suggested in her…

Holly McLean is a SAQA member, quilt maker, and fiber artist living in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. She has won several awards from local shows, has exhibited in the regional SAQA show, Structures, and is currently exhibiting in the SAQA show, My Corner of the World Canada. She enjoys playing with paints and fiber, and expressing her love of nature and the outdoors in her artwork. natureart-hollym.blogspot.com Susan Brubaker Knapp is the host of “Quilting Arts TV.” She is a studio fiber artist, author, and teacher, and has several Quilting Arts Workshop™ videos; her latest is “52 Free-Motion Quilting Motifs and Fillers.” Susan lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and two daughters. She teaches both nationally and internationally. bluemoonriver.com Joanne Sharpe is an energetic, whimsical artist dedicated to empowering women to embrace…

Each of Leni Levenson Wiener’s pieces tells a story from a moment frozen in time—first using her camera and then using fabric. As a former commercial photographer, the camera is Leni’s constant companion, and she claims that she first became a photographer because she was a frustrated artist who could not draw or paint. SUSAN: Photography is the first step in most of your fiber art. Why take the next step, in a different medium? Why not just take photos? LENI: Moving from photo to fabric allows me to expand on the original photo in a way that makes it more complex and more interesting. Using color, I can direct viewers where I want them to look, and influence the story or the focus of the piece. Using unexpected fabrics—prints as perceived…

Organic motifs are many quilters’ favorites. Flowers and leaves—things we see around us every day—are things we are intimately familiar with, so they are easy to visualize and stitch. But since everyone is using them, you might want to create some designs that are a little different. Look beyond the most common organic motifs and develop your own. Buds, fruit, seedpods, woodgrain, wind and water currents, berries, and textures from nature, such as pebbles or bark, are all good candidates for quilting motifs. Less common quilting motifs will give your work more interest and more personality. They can also add to the meaning behind a piece, or add an additional layer of complexity. I used a large watery organic motif in the background of my quilt “Fancy Goldfish.” The bubbles push the…

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? • 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, or exhibiting your art quilts, you probably have great ideas to share! How to submit • Write a brief description of your idea and email it to submissions@quiltingarts.com. Your submission…