What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

In June 2012 I inaugurated this blog as follows: “Another quilting blog, ugh!  Why?  Well, I’ve been trying to neaten and straighten my notes, thoughts, resources, works in progress, and my work.  So, I thought a blog might be the way to go.  It’s for me primarily.  If anyone else stumbles on it, that’s fine.  I considered using Pinterest, but decided I needed the ability to add words.  So here I am.”

I had no idea I would continue writing posts for 11 years. Yep, that’s 11 years of at least one post a week, for ...

I’d like to add this quote to the above, as it sums up my approach to art:

If I knew what the picture was going to be like, I wouldn’t make it.
― Unknown

This week I’ll take you on a trip to the Alliance, Ohio, Feline Historical Foundation, better known to my friends as the cat museum. No quilts were harmed in the course of our trip, but I was reminded yet again of the lengths of collecting mania some people go to.

According to the organization’s website, the CFA Foundation’s mission is to “acquire and conserve the history of cats and show the development of the cat fancy through the acquisition of fine art, artifacts, and literature.” The museum has lots of cat show memorabilia and cat stud books ...

I finished my last 100 day project collage on June 2 and am now pondering exactly what to do with a plastic bag full of 4 by 4 inch collages. Almost all are abstract compositions, though some could be considered impressionistic landscapes and a few have recognizable images.

My original parameters were to glue painted, printed and magazine photo scraps onto squares of card stock, and add a stamped image to them. I had a plastic tub full of scraps left from previous projects that I augmented with magazine photo strips about halfway through. I tried to use the scraps ...

It’s been a long time since I reviewed a fiber art book here, partly because I haven’t found ones I thought were interesting enough and partly because there seem to be fewer craft books published these days. Thanks to my library I came upon Lesley Riley’s latest book, “Photo Memory Quilts,” which I really could have used a year ago when I was making my unknown family quilts.

The book combines discussion of why you would want to make a memory quilt, ways to get ideas for one, and nuts and bolts of constructing one. It has ...

Recently I did a stint at the Summit County Historical Society’s booth at the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo in Akron, Ohio. Much of my time was spent explaining features of the Society’s antique and vintage quilts on display, but I carved out 10 minutes to race around the expo exhibits. I photographed only one quilt – Ben Hollingsworth’s “M. Matisse Chambres a Louer.”

Ben explains its origin story and years-long making process here. When I first laid eyes on it I didn’t know all that. All I knew was this quilt ticked several boxes for me ...

Thanks to SAQA’s Material Matters seminar for its members, I’ve had a good time viewing videos and websites that feature innovative materials. I love the idea of wearable art, and the shows are certainly more entertaining than the usual art quilt show.

Somehow the women’s costumes seem to focus on hard to walk in and bondage type outfits, but there’s tons of inventive use of materials in this World of Wearable Art Show highlights video. Of course the outfits are probably best suited to Cirque du Soleil performers.

High couture by Iris van Herpen is modeled ...

This past Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I participated in a Zoom workshop on Textural Style with Natalya Khorover. We had a two hour Zoom session each day and then homework to do for the next day’s class. The class focused on using scraps of any type to create small machine and hand sewn collages. Natalya stresses materials reuse, especially plastics, in her work and teaching, though this workshop used fabrics more than plastics.

By Friday afternoon my studio looked like a fabric scrap cannon had been fired off, I had started four pieces, and my brain was exhausted. So ...

I don’t know if that’s the proper term for fabrics that aren’t made from naturally derived materials such as cotton and linen. I don’t like the term man made, with its inherent bias, but fabrics developed from polyester often are called that. Here I’m talking about tyvek, evolon, lutrador, and the like. Why am I talking about them? A recent SAQA seminar on such fabrics reminded me of my own efforts to use such stuff.

Part of the seminar was a video conversation with Shannon Conley, an artist who cheerfully tackles all sorts of three ...

Finally, this year I’m doing the 100 day project. What’s that? You choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and share your process on social media. The organizers define creative widely, but I chose to make 4 by 4 inch collages from my paper scraps and stamps. Why? I already had all the materials needed, the size makes it doable, and it’s a chance for more composition practice.

Since February 22, the official start date, I have made 16 small collages. Sometimes I made two in a day as I had all ...

Thank goodness dreary February is brightened up by Valentine’s Day. This year I decided to go traditional with hearts and flowers to celebrate, though I won’t turn down a nice bottle of wine or some dark chocolate.

I think I once made a hearts quilt, but it was gifted a long time ago. Rather than go the quilt route I found it was faster and more fun to sew some hearts onto leftover blank greeting cards. The background is painted pattern tissue, and the hearts are old sheet music that I painted and stamped. The papers were heavy ...

Florida has two big features going for it – sun and warmth. Interesting landscape, not so much, at least not in southwest Florida. One needs to find amusement elsewhere. After sampling a Cuban bakery and a Salvadoran restaurant, and with no luck finding any open beaches thanks to Hurricane Ian, I searched out exhibits to take in. I found the Naples Art Institute had a show of M. C. Escher’s work called Reality and Illusion so off we went.

Escher was a Dutch printmaker (woodcuts, lithographs, mezzotints) who became wildly popular among the college age set in the 1960s and ...

“We don’t have to live with our mistakes simply because we spent a long time making them, or we fear it will take a long time to correct them.” – Bonnie Hunter

I came across the above sentence by accident as I don’t read Bonnie’s blog every day. But I’m glad I read her January 4 post as I think I need to apply her attitude toward my work. Oddly, I don’t worry about mistakes in my quilting and have no problem cutting up or revising work I consider a failure. Yet, I am surprised to ...

Last year I began to poke my head over the parapet a bit and get out more. The landscape has changed as online teaching and get togethers become more permanent. I am so over Zoom meetings, though it can work for classes.

I used the extra home time to dive into non fabric art mediums such as collage and mixed media. Of course that meant new supplies were bought and a new learning curve was begun, which was a good thing. The basics of design and composition carried over from quilting, of course, but different mediums have different pros and ...

Go big or go home could be the motto of The Morse Museum in Winter Park, Florida. It boasts “the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933), including the artist and designer’s jewelry, pottery, paintings, art glass, leaded-glass lamps and windows; his chapel interior from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago; and art and architectural objects from his Long Island country estate, Laurelton Hall.” Since my husband enjoys all aspects of Tiffany’s comprehensive output, we stopped by the museum on our way to our eventual Florida vacation destination.

There are ...

You know you use a color a lot in your quilts when a friend hands you a fat quarter and says, I thought of you when I saw this (fill in your favorite color) fabric. In my case, the favorite color is a tossup between red and turquoise.

As a child I was drawn to red, especially for my coats; and as an adult I’ve made a quilt called “I Like Red.” But as I look around my living space I realize that I use turquoise and its neighbors (aqua, teal, etc.) far more than red for decorative sewn ...

Since I continue to be under the weather and without any artistic spark, I’d like to share a few of the glorious paintings we saw at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid and at other museums. Guidebooks go on about the Prado, and the Bosch paintings aren’t to be missed, but unless you have a thing for large portraits featuring Habsburg chins or are in awe of the immense skills of Velazquez and Goya, your time is better spent elsewhere in Madrid. My recommendations are the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia.

The Thyssen is the more manageable for ...

While I had intended to have a newly sewn lap quilt top to show you, the universe had other plans. A few days after my husband and I returned from Spain we both came down with something flu-like. It wasn’t Covid, if the multiple negative test results were to be believed. Instead, I’ll share what came to be my photo obsession of our trip – portals.

Here’s yet another “classic” post from 2016. You guessed it, I’m still on vacation. This post is especially pertinent as I have just dropped my Modern Quilt Guild membership. I don’t know why it took me so long. Maybe I kept hoping the direction would swing away from all the patterns.

With QuiltCon West underway in California it seems a good time to declare that I am over modern quilting, as defined by current modern quilt practitioners. Back in 2012 I had high hopes for a bolder, less pretty, more personally defined approach to quilting. I read ...

I’m still on vacation so here’s a post about one of my favorite quilts. It is visually pleasing and conveys a pointed message in a humorous way.

My recent visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Jazz Age exhibit revealed a surprise near the end – a quilt. The exhibit features scads of diamond and platinum jewelry, stylish but uncomfortable looking furniture, impractical coffee and tea sets, flapper dresses, intriguing textiles, and all sorts of room interior designs. However, its sleek styles didn’t find their way into period quilts.

Yet as a portent of the 1930s, Mrs ...