What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Not quite a quarterly update, and I realized that I did not post about my goals here, on my blog. So, let’s start by sharing my goals and how they are going now that we are a third way through the year.

Solo Show Goals:

Overall, my solo show went really well. Two of my three events had great attendance and participation. I loved how all the ...

My time with the Durham Art Guild (DAG), as an artist in residence (AiR) has come to an end. It was bittersweet, excited about the new opportunities in front of me (more to come) but sad I won’t see everyone as often. I can highly recommend this 6-month (ish) artist in residence. I got so much out of it.

I learned a lot about myself through this residence, which could be in part due to the fact I had a lot to learn about being a full-time artist for the first time ...

My artist in residence with the Durham Art Guild is nearing an end, and with that is my solo show. The artist in residence is approximately 6 months in length. The show should be new work that you’ve made during the show. There’s a lot to do to fill the space for the show, and a lot of background activities. So here’s my list below.

Space Planning

• Make sure with the event space what insurance is with the space and what additional insurance you may need.
• Think about a contract with the event space so it is ...

It has been 6 months since I started my Artist in Residence with the Durham Art Guild. With it coming to an end, I have a solo show with all new work March 15th – April 11th. My work for this residence explored more of my process but also looking at making pieces that may be more than just 2 dimensions.

For those that are local, I hope you can come to the Opening Reception March 15th and celebrate this journey with me. In the meantime, I’m sharing with you all the details around my show.

Artist Statement

Creating connections ...

2023 has been a little bit of a whirlwind, from quitting my job to focusing on being an emerging artist, to turning 50, and then to top off the milestones celebrating 10 years of sewing and quilting. I am so thankful for the opportunities and the people I have met and supported me on this journey.

In 2023, I was focused on engaging and learn about the local art communities. It was a year of firsts:

• I was accepted for my first artist in residence and then was offered a 6 month one with the Durham Art Guild.
• Had my ...

On this journey of being a full-time artist, I’ve been lucky to have amazing conversations with many people (artists, curators and others). While the creative practice is important so is the business side of being an artist.

The business steps, I have taken so far are:

• Created a new website using Square Space for both my Gallery and Shop.
• Updated my class descriptions for Q4 2023 and 2024. I am taking bookings, please let me know your interest.
• On Instagram, I have seen a dramatic decrease in engagement, as such I have also started a monthly newsletter. If you ...

As part of sharing my journey becoming a full-time artist as an emerging artist, I thought I’d share what I have applied for so far this year and results of the submissions. I’m including Artist in Residence Programs and the exhibitions I’ve submitted to and the quilt names of the images submitted. I thought it might be useful to include dates in which quilts will either be exhibited or when the artist in residence is. The dates are important, as I am careful I don’t overlap submissions, just in case of acceptance.

Artist in Residence Programs ...

In 2022, one of my goals that I needed to accomplish to quit my job and become a full-time artist was to be successful in getting accepted to do a solo art show (exhibition). I was successful in that task.

Town of Cary (in NC and where I live) has a rolling call for artists that get reviewed twice a year (August 1 and February 1). You will need 10 digital images of your work (that has to reflect what you will exhibit but not the actual quilts), an image list, a resume (including exhibition history….if you are a ...

Overall, I loved the two weeks I spent at Penland School of Craft, as a Winter Artist in Residence. The people were amazing. It was so fun to see what everyone was doing in each of the studios. It was amazing just to kick off my new life as ?, who knows (yes, I quit my job with no plans but to rebalance and rejuvenate and work on some art). I am getting ahead of myself though…

I was all prepared, or so I thought, after I had received the acceptance to Penland’s Winter Residency (application process covered in this ...

Getting more involved in the art community has been such a great experience so far and I have learnt so much. In my previous posts, I talked about setting goals to get started (Part 1) and how I applied for exhibitions (Exhibitions – Part 2). This post is about applying for artist-in-residence programs.

The basics

What are they?
An Artist-in-residence program give artists the opportunity to live and work outside of their usual environments, providing them with time to reflect, research, or produce work (Artnet News). Many of the artist in residence, I have found, also provides you with

• Connection to ...

Sorry for the delay in this post. The last quarter of 2022 was so busy as I was transitioning my out of my job and the company I worked for, for 24 years. Also, in December I got to go Morocco and came back from traveling with COVID. It was a very interesting year end.

Just a reminder, this is what I have found or done on my journey moving from being a quilter to a textile artist. This may or may not be the best path for you. Let’s talk about how to get into an exhibition and ...

This year, I set a goal to move more into the art world and seen as a textile artist. I don’t know why but I was not expecting much of a difference. I was so wrong. There is a lot to navigate in the art community that is not the same as in a quilting community (for me a modern quilting community). I thought I would start sharing my experiences now that I am finding my feet. Over the last 12-18 months, I have been learning a lot and have been successful by:

• included in two exhibitions
• sold a ...

I have thoroughly enjoyed quilting these smaller projects, having finishes each week and a chance to experiment – Week 1, Week 2. This project was no different. “One of these things” is a 4 part piece, with each piece measuring 20 x 30 in.

These pieces are minimalistic and geometric in nature. They only have two colors, both being primary colors, blue and yellow. As I thought through the quilting I knew it needed to be simple and complement the elements in the design.

I decided on using 1/2″ straight line on the background aspects of each piece, both horizontal ...

What do you do when some of your favorite clothes are no longer useable due to wear? This quilt started as my favorite New Zealand t-shirt (red with map of NZ and the word “Home” on it), two striped t-shirts that I associated with my mum, and my favorite work trousers (a pair of woolen plaid trousers) had holes and had worn thin in places that could not be mended.

I really did not want to part with these four items, in particular. I don’t know why but I had an emotional attachment to these pieces of clothing but ...

As QuiltCon Together approaches (02/18/2021) I thought I would share this quilt that made it into the virtual show but had not made it onto my blog so far. 

Say hello to Orange Creamsicle. Orange Creamsicle started with a single block that I had hoped would be a great compliment to the rest of the Sunday Best blocks.

To be honest the block just didn’t really work with the rest of quilt. Yes, that became the start to Orange Creamsicle.

I introduced some limits to this quilt after the first block, as I really wanted to try ...

In the previous post, I walked through my process of creating the three tops I created while playing with color. In this post let’s take one of those quilts, Whitney, and talk about choosing quilting design.

Whitney is a 4 x 4 grid design, (4 columns x 4 rows). I consider these columns as a red (1), green (2), yellow (3) and blue (4) column if you read it from left to right.

Quilt Designs

I started the quilting with the yellow column, which provides almost a consistent stripe down the quilt. I feel this is where the eye ...

Instead of just posting about my finishes, I thought I would go into more detail on a few quilts. This first post I have touched on before but wanted to talk more about the steps, techniques and process of building these quilts from design to binding.

I am starting with a color play study I did, that was inspired by Stanley Whitney’s work.  As Josef Albers explores color with his work Interaction of color, I love how Stanley Whitney does the same (at least for me) in the placement of the colors in the grid.  Here are a couple ...

Wow, can you believe it s already July? There’s not much I can say about the year. I am doing things I could never have predicted I’d be doing. I never thought I would be working from home while helping a middle school remote learner, and maintaining a household. I never thought I would be leaving the house no more than once a week. And when I do leave the house wearing a mask.

I feel that this is the time to listen and educate myself. I am a foreigner in the US and I had a lot ...

Idea

Have you ever felt left out, or just on the outside of a group or even cast out? I assume most people at one time or another have felt like that. I have at various times, more than once. This quilt was originally designed based on that feeling of being on the “outs” from a group.

Design

I started the design with an idea of a group people being represented by 10 lines; 9 black (representing the group), 1 red (representing me or the person who was feeling left out). The other big decision I made was on the ...

Just before Christmas, I made a couple of mini quilts as gifts. I have not shared those makes with you yet. One of those quilts was a striking black and white minimal quilt.

Idea

This quilt was inspired based on a drain cover discovered on our family walk around the neighborhood. I loved the diagonal pattern of lines.

Design

During the design phase I used those 45 degree lines in the top part of the design. In the drain you have this bar 1/2 way across the lines, giving it a broken line feel. For me, that translated into ...