Spring Quilt Market: Pittsburgh 2014

 

Spring Quilt Market was held a few weeks ago in my hometown, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! I was there for “Quilting Arts TV,” to meet with sponsors and seek out new talent. Here are some of the things that caught my eye. 

Ruth Chandler of Textile Evolution has a new book out called Modern Hand Stitching (Landauer) that is a fabulous resource for those who want to delve into contemporary hand embroidery. It has large photos that clearly demonstrate how to create each stitch, and fabulous gallery shots of what you can do with those stitches.

Melanie Testa was printing in her booth, and launching her first fabric line, “Meadowlark,” with Windham Fabrics. It is beautiful!

While I was there, I ran into Teri Lucas, a talented free-motion quilter and teacher, and we just had to take a selfie:

I got to see some friends I met while teaching in South Africa in 2012: Barb and Mary of Me & My Sister, who were there with a lovely new fabric line from Moda:



I tried to take a lot of photos of the floor before Market opened, when you could see the booths more clearly:

Alexander Henry’s booth featured Ghastlie decorations celebrating its new fabric line: 

Linda Poole (left) and Sherry Rogers-Harrison were doing demonstrations in The Warm Company’s booth. They have been teaching together recently. Sherry is a professional longarm quilter known for her coloring techniques called Ink-Liqué and Paint-Liqué.  Linda has a new book with AQS called Painted Applique: A New Approach. 

psssst… if you’ve been waiting for the return of The Warm Company’s Steam-a-Seam 2 or Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 (the fusible adhesive that works best for my fusible appliqué technique), it sounds like they may both be available later this year! I can’t wait, as my stockpile is running low. There’s an update on their website here.  

Here is Elaine Quehl’s beautiful new line of batiks, “Falling Leaves,” for Northcott:

Ellen Medlock has some new fabric line with cute little houses called “Charmville” that is, well, simply charming!

Oliso is coming out with this limited-edition darling pink iron in July. For every purchase of  the TG1100 pink, Oliso will donate $10 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Linda Lindsey of Square Rose had some innovative bag designs I loved:

Most of the time, the floor was busy with quilt shop owners and other industry professionals. The credentialing process was tightened up this year, and the event was only open “to the trade.” Most of the vendors I spoke to were pleased with this, and said that orders were up at this Quilt Market.

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh is a great venue for Market. Pittsburgh (and it’s spelled with an h, folks!) is where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River, and the convention center pays homage to that, both with some beautiful waterways and fountains on the ground level, and with spectacular views on the Allegheny River upstairs. The structures in the ceiling inside echo the shapes of Pittsburgh’s many bridges.

Mixed-media star Tim Holtz was at Market with his “Eclectic Elements” fabric line with Coats.  He’s done some neat dies for Sizzix that look like cathedral window and hexie designs.

I took a lot of photos in Alison Glass’ booth, as it was beautifully designed and decorated with her quilts and her fabric collections for Andover.

Fairfield was showing of a nifty product called Foamology Design Foam that has a sticky surface on the back, so you can wrap fabric around and secure it to the back easily:

Design Foam features a stickybase™ self adhesive foam board back for foolproof covering and wall application. When you have a stickybase™ to help you, 0nly ordinary household tools are needed — just choose your fabric (or other fun material) and simply peel, wrap, stick and done! Create wall art panels or fashion unique wall hangings of no-sew patchwork designs — even create memo boards with tufted effects — the options for creating with Design Foam are endless - See more at: http://foamology101.com/#sthash.xvrKDHF7.dpuf

Design Foam features a stickybase™ self adhesive foam board back for foolproof covering and wall application. When you have a stickybase™ to help you, 0nly ordinary household tools are needed — just choose your fabric (or other fun material) and simply peel, wrap, stick and done! Create wall art panels or fashion unique wall hangings of no-sew patchwork designs — even create memo boards with tufted effects — the options for creating with Design Foam are endless - See more at: http://foamology101.com/#sthash.xvrKDHF7.dpuf

Kathy McGee of Hemma Design has a new line with Swedish influences by Red Rooster, and her booth had some darling projects made with oilcloth/laminated fabrics and three-dimensional elements.

Art Gallery Fabrics’ booth was so fresh and springy!

Serbian designer Katarina Rocella’s collection for Art Gallery Fabrics, “Indelible,” caught my eye because of its mix of cool and earthy colors with woodland motifs and strong graphics:

And of course I loved Carrie Bloomston’s new line for Windham, “Paint,” with its images of paintbrushes, paint swatches, and newsprint: 

Olfa is celebrating 35 years since it created the first rotary cutter, a device that revolutionized quilting. They had a gigantic rotary cutter and everyone (including me) was posing with it:

Camelot Fabrics has a fun new line featuring Star Trek motifs:

 

Dale Riehl of The City Quilter in New York City showed off their “All the Buildings in New York” fabric. Love it!

 

Oooooh, there are some gorgeous designs in Interweave’s “The Unofficial Downton Abbey Sews”:

Overall trends I noticed:
An emphasis on hand and “slow” stitching, including embroider
Fabric lines with rich, saturated color schemes
Fabrics with graphic themes
An explosion of batiks in every pattern and color
Many fabric lines with a Nordic or Central European feel
Lots of darling patterns for children’s clothing 

“Lenten Rose”

“Lenten Rose”
by Susan Brubaker Knapp
copyright 2014

I am rather excited to share with you this piece that I made yesterday. It will be about 14 x 11" when it is faced (maybe smaller, as I am considering cropping it in). It started with this ink drawing in my sketchbook, which I did sometime last year:

I then water-colored the line drawing:
 

I blew up the black ink line drawing and traced it onto white fabric, using a Micron Pigma Pen, then painted it with ProChemical & Dye transparent textile paint:

And then I stitched with black thread: 

 

I do a lot of crosshatching in my sketches, and it was interesting, and more challenging, to do it in thread:

I had a lot of fun with this, and I rather like this more graphic, sketchy, loose style. It is not as realistic as most of my work, but it is fun. And certainly faster. I am looking forward to using more of my sketches in my textile art!

“Gazing Globe”

“Gazing Globe”
copyright 2014 by Susan Brubaker Knapp
24" x 60"

I am excited and honored to announce that my piece “Gazing Globe” has been accepted into the “Reflections’ invitational exhibition of Dinner at Eight Artists. The 33-piece exhibition will premiere this fall at International Quilt Market and International Quilt Festival in Houston. 

Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison curate, teach, write and make art under the name “Dinner at Eight Artists.” I consider myself very fortunate to have had my work accepted in this exhibition, and in three of their previous exhibitions, “An Exquisite Moment” (2013), “Rituals” (2012), and “The Space Between” (2011).

Here is Leslie and Jamie’s description of the theme: “A mirror image. A response to a thought or word. A memory. What glints back at us as we gaze upon the water. The throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat, or sound without absorbing it.  What will your reflection reveal about you?”

My piece is based on a photo I took this winter of a gazing globe that sits in my garden. It was the day after a big snow, and in the bright sunshine, the globe glowed, and in some of its ripples, captured the warped reflections of the bare tree trunks and branches.  

I had fun doing some detailed quilting in the white background along the right side of the gazing globe:

Here are some other detail shots:

The piece is based on this slice of a photo I took in January 2014:

Under the needle now

 

This is what I have under the needle of my Bernina right now. It is really just an experiment; I’m not at all sure where it will take me.

Sometime last year, I took a photograph of some dried, skeletal hydrangea blossoms in front of my collection of antique violet glass bottles. The colors were gorgeous with the light coming in the window through them, and the hydrangeas look like delicate lace. I manipulated the image in Photoshop, then had it printed on white cotton through Spoonflower. 

It is about 35" x 48". My plan is to thread sketch it, then add batting and backing fabric, and quilt the background (the blue and purple part) heavily so that the fragile hydrangeas stand out. I’ve never worked this way, so we shall see how it turns out! 

Second article on thread sketching is in June/July issue of Quilting Arts

The second article in my 2014 series on thread sketching is in the June/July 2014 issue of Quilting Arts magazine. It focuses on stitching wholecloth painted quilts. You can see what’s inside this issue and purchase the magazine at the Interweave store (digital downloads are available now here; the print magazine is available on pre-order now). This issue should be on newsstands May 27.

Slow stitching

Lately, I’ve had a hankering for handwork, a need to slow down and work with my needle in my hands, more often. Here are some of the projects I’ve been working on, in between my faster moving thread-sketched, fusible appliqued, and wholecloth-painted works. 

The first project has been in progress for about two years. I purchased this denim jacket for $3 at a local thrift shop, and have been embroidering it – with sewing implements including scissors, pin cushions, thread spools, and a tape measure – since then, mostly on long airplane trips, and in my hotel room in the evenings after I teach. I’m using solid and varigated perle cotton, and I just love how it sparkles with color. I mostly have the sleeves still to do.

Here’s a close-up shot showing how I outlined the designs, and surrounded it with “chicken scratch” stitches:

The next one is a needleturn applique project I’ve had in my head for years, but just started today. It is a simple wreath of leaves. I have the first three blocks pinned down and ready to stitch. I want this to be king-sized bed quilt; it will probably need at least 25 blocks! It will be another good “take-along” project. All the foundations will be shades of blue, but different blues, and the leaves are greens, blues, and purples. 

The third project has been in the works for at least three years! It started as a fat quarter of clamp-dyed Shibori that I dyed black, then embroidered with various threads and perle cotton and couched-down threads. Now I am free-motion machine quilting it with a varigated black-gray-white thread.

I often describe myself as a “multiple-personality disorder quilter,” because I love all types of quilting and stitching. I knit, needlepoint, cross stitch, embroider, hand quilt, hand applique, and free-motion thread sketch and quilt. Some of these techniques fill certain needs (hand work is perfect for concentration and relaxation, and can be done while I wait during soccer practices, piano lessons, and orthodontist appointments). Others, such as the machine work, fill my “need for speed,” I suppose. I enjoy the variety. 

Smoky Mountain Quilters Show is May 23-25

The Smoky Mountain Quilters of Tennessee will host their 34th Annual Quilt Show and Competition May 23-25 on the campus of Maryville College in the Cooper Athletic Center in Maryville, Tennessee. This is a big guild with many talented quilters, and promises to be a great show!

The quilt show will feature 200 quilts in competition, two special exhibits, an antique bed turning, and more than 20 vendors. Vendors will be doing demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday. There is also opportunity baskets of quilting items, including a featherweight machine; a quilt raffle; small quilts for sale; and a children’s scavenger hunt.
 
Want to go?
Admission: $5 (bring a can of food to donate to a local food bank and receive $1 off)
May 23 and 24, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
May 25, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Free parking
Handicapped accessible venue
More info: http://smokymtnquilters.com/