Book Review: Art Quilts at Play

Art Quilts at Play: Ignite Your Inner Artist – Experiment with Surface Design Techniques by Jane Davila & Elin Waterston
C&T Publishing. 111 pages. $29.95

Mixed-media and fiber artists Jane Dávila and Elin Waterston, the team that brought us Art Quilt Workbook in 2007, have another hit on their hands, I think. This book encourages quilters to explore new techniques, materials and processes. It offers straightforward directions, concise supply lists, numerous illustrations and ample encouragement for beginners as well as those who already have their feet wet. It’s an excellent introduction for beginners, or a handy reference for the more experienced.

Section 1 includes chapters on:
1. fabric creation (mixing color, fabric dyeing, simple screen printing, nature printing, found object printing, stamp making, fabric painting with water-based resists, bleach discharging, and images on fabric)

2. special effects (paintstiks, fabric inks, water soluble pastels, painted fusible web, gel medium, expandable paint medium, shrink film, metalic foil and leafing, PearlEx powders, art glitter, and Angelina heat-bondable fiber)

3. a student gallery.

I had already played with most of these materials and techniques, so I didn't really need the first section. But as a teacher of surface design techniques for quilters, this is definitely a book I'll recommend, and refer to in class. Those without formal art training will also appreciate the glossary.

The second part of the book is what takes this beyond a mere how-to or reference book. Here are fun and interesting ways to push yourself out of your box, share your work, learn from others, and collaborate with other artists in a group.

Section 2 includes chapters on:
1. challenges (subject challenges, word challenges, process challenges)

2. collaborative projects (fabric art journals, surprise package, exquisite corpse, mixed media art)

3. art to trade (artist trading cards, fiber art postcards, small art swaps)

4. connections (online groups and the Internet, small in-person groups, critique groups)

5. collaborating artists gallery.

All in all, this is a great book with lots of practical exercises, as well as loads of inspiration, encouragement and energy.

You can order an autographed copy on Jane or Elin’s website.

The mermaid returns!

“Teach Me to Hear Mermaids Singing” is back home, safe and sound. She’s been traveling the world for the past 2-1/2 years. I made this quilt in 2006. It was the second art quilt I’d ever made. I started it after painting the face in a class taught by Bonnie McCaffery. The rest of the quilt is made up of tiny fabric pieces (some as small as 1/4") positioned under tulle, then heavily embellished with thread painting. You can see this in the detail shots below.

This quilt was selected as one of 50 finalists in the 2006 Husqvarna Viking competition “MasterPieces: Imagine That!” It was exhibited first at the 2006 International Quilt Market and Festival in Houston, and then toured to Sweden, Great Britain, Chicago, Finland, Australia and Denmark. I am happy to have her home!

Copyright craziness

I belong to several online groups of art quilters and pattern desginers who have been struggling with copyright issues. Most people just don't understand copyright law (and there is a LOT that is complex about it.) But this part is simple. If you photocopy a copyrighted quilt pattern (one that says “copyright” on it, or has the copyright symbol, the little circle with the c inside it), you are violating American copyright law. You are breaking the law. You are stealing someone else’s work. I know a lot of quilters who share patterns; after they've made the item, they give the pattern to someone else. (This is not illegal, but it is unethical, in my opinion, because it deprives the designer of any income.) Or they make photocopies of a pattern and give it to a friend. (This is illegal under copyright law.) Most of them are not bad people. They just don't think about what they are doing.

Most pattern designers don’t make much money. They are like the rest of us: just trying to pay their mortgages, pay their kids' dentist bills, and heat their homes. After making color copies, photocopies and/or paying a printer to print … and then calculating in the time for collating, stuffing and putting the patterns in polybags, the profit margin is not big. Believe me. And then … if you sell your patterns to a quilt shop directly, you get about half the retail price. If you sell your patterns to a distributor, they usually want an additional 30% knocked off the wholesale price.

I'm not outraged, I'm not angry. I don't think I can control the world, and I don't think the problem will ever go away. I just think that the quilting industry needs to educate consumers about copyright. With that goal, I'm going to start including this orange copyright logo on all my patterns. If you are a pattern designer, and would like to use this logo, contact me and I'll send you a copy. Or pull it off my blog and use it. It is NOT copyrighted. If we all start talking about the issues, maybe people will understand it better and start doing the right thing.

Charmed, I’m sure…

My local art quilt group, the Pandoras, met today to make charms. We followed directions in the January/February 2009 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine by Elin Waterston to make charms from wood, polymer clay, and shrink film. We had a ball, and got some great results.

The blue and green charms in the photo above are polymer clay rolled on a texture plate, and then highlighted with Pearl Ex powder. Below are charms made from shrink film (similar to the ShrinkyDinks I made as a kid) stamped with StazOn, Fabrico ink and Sharpie markers:


This is a wooden disc, with a drilled hole, painted with Lumiere, and then stamped:

More polymer clay charms:

Wooden discs painted, stamped and colored with a Sharpie pen (left), and one with bits of fabric stuck on with gel medium (right):


Some of these charms are headed for Cloth Paper Scissors‘ ”Charm & Be Charmed“ swap. You can send in five charms by April 13, and get five back in June. Fun!

Serendipity I

This is a small piece I made this weekend for the silent auction at the Charlotte Quilters Guild quilt show (March 20-22). I started with one of the prints I made in Janet’s open mesh screen printing workshop. It has machine quilting and hand embroidery on top. The embellishments are polymer clay.

Design inspiration at Ikea

A new Ikea store just opened in Charlotte last weekend. My 12-year-old daughter and I made a trek there this afternoon. I’d heard all the great things about Ikea, but was still unprepared ... WOW! This place is huge, and full of wonderful, affordable, well-designed products.

The building exterior is all blue and yellow, like the Swedish flag:

The Charlotte store is 365,000 square feet, and has 49 room settings, 3 model homes, 1700 parking spaces, a 350-seat restaurant, a Swedish food market, a bistro, and a chidren’s play area. We arrived around noon, and had lunch before we ventured into the vast store. The restaurant features several Swedish foods, including dill-cured salmon, and Swedish meatballs (which Lea said were excellent):

The restaurant is decorated with Ikea furnishings, including these black-and-white fabric panels:



Hung in the windows, the red ovals on the fabric panels glowed in the sunlight. Giant nylon leaves marked a small play area for children:

These lights looked like they were made from giant potato chips:

Of course, what I liked best were the textiles:













These two panels of fabric were used as curtains but they also make a bold statement as wall art:





Here’s the same piece of fabric as above, under glass in cool customizable panels that cover shelving units:

These bookshelves had wonderful frosted glass coverings etched with floral designs:

This wall light was made from compressed glass:



These bookcases had a beautiful black floral print at the back:



Cool lights for a child’s room:

Susan Shie has started a blog!

One of my favorite artists (and one of the most influential fiber artists of our time, in my opinion), Susan Shie, has just started a blog. Susan considers herself to be an “outsider artist .” Her fiber art contains lots of writing (and social/political commentary). I was pleased to see that she’s started a blog, because it will give me an opportunity to see how she works, what she is thinking about, and how her work progresses. You can see Susan’s website here, and read her blog here.

Open mesh screen printing workshop with Janet Lasher

I spent today at a workshop on open mesh screen printing, taught by my friend, Janet Lasher, in her Charlotte studio. What a fun day!

Janet and all of the students today (me, Linda Stegall and P.J. Howard) are members of the Charlotte group Fiber Art Options. Janet is a wonderful teacher. She taught five classes at International Quilt Festival in Houston last year, and has been invited back to teach this fall.

Here is a print on fabric by Janet:

and a detail of the same print:

Linda’s print featured an elegant swirl and a sophisticated color palette:

P.J. thought her design came out looking like birch bark …

… or birch trees, when turned the other direction:

Here’s mine:

Janet had done a photo-emulsion screen of a paper cut, then used Caran D'Ache Neocolor Artists’ Crayons to fill in areas before printing:

P.J.’s Caran D’Ache print was interesting on striped fabric:

Here’s my Caran D’Ache print (left) hanging up to dry with P.J.’s birch print:

Janet’s cat Apollo supervised the print-making:

Janet had the BIG set of Caran D’Ache: