Joan's "Abstract Landscape" juries in to the Slater Museum Show!

Group member, Joan Johnson's "Abstract Landscape" was juried into the Slater Memorial Museum Annual Artists Exhibition. See the show in person in the Converse Gallery February 26 - March 30, 2012.
Congratulations Joan!

Article in the CT Reminder Newspaper January 2012

Group views the quilt as an art form

By Melanie Savage - Staff Writer
Willimantic - posted Tue., Jan. 17, 2012

When you think of quilting, do you think art? The collection currently on display at the Willimantic Food Co-op is designed to suggest that a quilt can be much more than simply a blanket used to keep one warm at night. The café corner at the Co-op features the work of a different group or artist every month. This month’s featured group is the Quiet Corner Art Quilt Group.

“I think we were on the waiting list for a year before our turn came up,” said group member Joan Johnson.

“We do art quilts,” said member Melanie Johnston. “These are not necessarily quilts that are designed to be put on a bed.” Most of the quilts in the display are rather small, but that’s not always the case. “Just like any other piece of art, they can vary in size,” said Johnston.

Subjects featured in the quilts run the gamut from chickens to abstract landscapes. The group meets monthly, and “There’s an inspiration word or theme every month,” said Johnston. The small black and white cat, for example, was inspired by an “Animals” theme. “That’s my cat,” said Johnson.

The peace sign was inspired by the “Found Objects” theme. It features a tiny, ceramic lamb that Johnston found while her home was undergoing renovations. It also has a story behind it, as do many of the Quiet Corner quilts.

“I was a selectman in Hampton,” said Johnston. A resident who was unhappy with a decision she’d made threw some nails onto her driveway. Johnston incorporated the nails into the fringe of her quilt. The lamb and the nails together inspired the quilt's title: “War and Peace.” The fabrics in the quilt are all hand-dyed, as are most of the fabrics that Johnston uses.

“It’s funny, when we bring them in, they’re all so different,” said Johnson, noting that each group member has her own area of artistic focus. Johnson likes to use photographs printed onto fabric. Another group member likes to embellish with beads and other baubles.

“I’m a technique junkie,” said member Cathey LaBonte. LaBonte has experimented with techniques such as melted wax and fabric paints. “Rogue media is kind of a benchmark of art quilting,” said LaBonte. “Meaning the use of stuff you ordinarily wouldn’t think of using with fabric.” Two of the quilts at the Co-op, for example, feature wine bottle labels. “They’re stitched right onto the fabric,” said Johnson.

What draws the women to quilting? “It’s all about texture,” said Johnston.

“The texture, the colors, everything,” said Johnson. “I just really love it.”

LaBonte, who has dabbled in other art forms, said that art quilting has really engaged her. “I like it because you can combine everything,” she said. “Paint, beads, stitching - you can combine all different kinds of media.”

The work of the Quiet Corner Art Quilt Group can be seen at the Willimantic Food Co-op throughout the month of January. For more information or to see photographs of the quilts, go to http://qcartquilts.blogspot.com/.

Artistic Inspiration

For this month's challenge, we made pieces inspired by a favorite artist.

Kandinsky's Circles: Melanie
I love abstract art and Kandinsky's circle color studies really appealed to me and seemed to lend themselves to a quilted project. I used fabric paint to paint the circles and background on pfd fabric. After heat setting the paint, I quilted the circle rings using the appopriate color thread for each color.

Escher: Pat Ferguson
Last spring, I attended an Escher exhibit and really fell in love with the way he uses dimension and perspective. I try to incorporate these techniques in my zentangles and zen quilting. I hope you can see it in my sketchbook pages and in the design I used on this wooden snowflake.

Kandinsky: Joan
I also chose Kandinsky. I almost did the circles but decided instead on this gradient color study.  I used some of my hand dyed indigo shibori fabric, some other hand dyes and a variety of  additional fabrics I had in my stash. If you study the painting, part of it looks a little muted. I used white tulle to simulate that muted effect. Here are pictures of the original, my piece in progress and my piece with the tulle overlay.

Sadler: Cathey
My artist was Sean Sadler. His piece, "Magic I" grabbed me because it had my favorite fall color palette. I changed some of the colors and bumped up the saturation. I started with a yellow silk base and used a wide variety of fabrics including organza, painted wonder under, ribbon, cottons and added foil and pearl-ex. I used misty fuse to tack down the fabrics. I did not quilt it *yet* because I was worried that it might detract from the sheer qualities of some of the fabrics. I am still thinking about this. Below is Sadler's original and my fabric interpretation.

Impressionism: Marcia
My love the impressionistic style. I used Claude Monet's art work as inspiration to create the apple tree near water. I used "snippets" from some old scraps I saved and my hand dyed indigo shibori. Chenile yarn was used for the tree trunk and more yarns for the haystacks. I put a layer of tulle over the entire piece to secure all the smaller pieces and add to the impressionistic feel.

I also brought along a zen quilt I recently completed. I stared it in one of Pat's classes. I added some red beads to contrast with the black & white. Can you see my initial  "K" in the piece?

Jackson Pollock: Linda
When I think of Jackson Pollock, I think random, bold color! I had a lot of fabrics with bold colors and prints ala Pollock and wanted to try a new technique, "jelly roll race." In this technique, you sew strips end to end then connect and seam till you end up with an interesting pattern. I like to make things that are useful so I made a black and white one into a pad pouch and embroidered it with my initials. I am still deciding what to do with my colorful Jackson Pollack piece.

Silk

This month's theme is "SILK." We all love the luminous quality of silk and the iridescence of silks that are woven with 2 colors.

Silken Landscape: Melanie
I printed miniature landscapes on silk organza and placed them on pieces of colored silk. These were then placed on a collaged background of hand-dyed and purchased silk pieces in colors of the fields and greenery. I used Shiva Paint sticks to create copper and gold swirls on the pale green silk. The quilting was done with silk thread. Sections are quilted differently, inspired by the silk behind the quilting.

Landscape: Joan
Lately I have been enjoying making landscape inspired collages. Working with silk made this one even more fun than usual. I used satin stitching in a varying width across the top section to add texture. The second layer is from a decadent fabric I purchased at MOOD in NYC. The 3rd layer is upholstery fabric - the "wrong" side, and the bottom layer, an iridescent silk. I have been buying frames when I see them on sale and decided to try some of my art quilts in art frames.

Contemplating Klee: Joan

In this piece, I printed a photo on silk of a painting by Paul Klee. My printer is not quite working correctly so the right side of the piece is actually printed on paper that I applied to the fabric with Textile Medium. I think it added a nice variation on texture and color. The lines are quilted in black, then echo quilted again in yellow, emulating the yellow surrounding the black lines in the actual painting. I used another frame - this time a clear plexiglass, to display this piece.

Silk Encaustic Collage: Mary
I was inspired by the Lines & Curves quilt Cathey was working on last month. I stated with creamy colored silk. I spread some aluminum foil on a warming tray, rubbed it with some crayons and let the crayon wax melt on the foil. I then used the melty, waxy foil as a monoprint and pressed the fabric into it. To remove the wax, I ironed the fabric between layers of printer paper till the wax came off on to the paper, leaving only color behind. I decided I liked the back side of the resulting fabric best and worked on that side to finish the piece. I made French seamed pleats, top stitched them and then couched some sparkly yarn across horizontally. I decided to call this technique "Encaustic Textile Monoprinting."

Tree Skirt: Cathey
In keeping with the season I decided to make a tree skirt for my miniature "snow & ice" themed tree. I started with white silk, used glue and foil to create the silvery snowflakes, then put some Ricky Times "Razzle Dazzle" thread in my bobbin and stitched around the edge. I finished up with beading to set off the sparkly thread.

Pussy Willow Silk Collage: Marcia
I did not have a chance to finish this piece yet but my idea was to use some of may favorite silk remnants in a collaged composition. I think the pattern on the larger piece on the right looks like pussy willows. I especially like the frayed edges. The texture and color of silk when it frays is luscious.

Lines

Our theme for November was "lines."

Melanie: In October Carol Anne Grotrian taught an indigo dyeing & shibori class at our quilt guild (NBQA). I decided to use pieces from that workshop for my project. In the piece I used "ice dyed" fabric overdyed using pole wraped and folded shibori techniques, 2 other shibori/indigo cottons, a piece of dyed & stamped linen, orange, white and navy silk, and finally, I used some of the string used to tie up the shibori in the dyeing process.  

Mary: This is a "Line Study," using metallic thread, couched yarns, antique buttons, and reverse applique. Hard to see in this photo, but there are also "pintucked" lines within the black fabric.

Marcia: I LOVE silk. I have recently acquired quite a few pieces and decided to use them in this project. All the "lines" are made from pieces of silk. Many of them frayed quite a bit in the process because I did not stabilize or fuse them. That made them difficult to work with but in the end, the effect of the frayed edges on the piece is quite nice.

Cathey: I have just returned from "A Quilters Gathering," in New Hampshire where I took 2 classes from Lyric Kinard. One of the many techniques we tried was foiling and using fusible thread. Based on that, I experimented by using fusible thread with glitter. The result is my piece this month. It incorporates batik fabric, fusible thread, glitter, and couched glittery cording.

I also took a class with Louisa Smith. That class was Lines and Curves. Here is my project from that class in progress:

Linda: I have sort of killed "2 birds with one stone" here. I am trying to get Christmas project finished. I made this table runner from a great border fabric. It is quite linear so it sort of fits the bill for "lines."

Curves

Our theme for October was "Curves."

Marcia: I brought 2 projects. The first one is from an NBQA "Block of the Month" from last year called "Twisted Sash." I added yo yo's to it, trying to match color and curve in the placement of the yo yo's.

My second project is very "out of the box" for me. It is free form and not bound by borders or binding. It is asymmetrical with curved piecing. I couched some yarns and let them flow off the piece. Even the fabrics have curves in them.

Joan: I made more of my "stitched fabric," this time using curvy piecing. The overstitching blends the fabrics into a cohesive piece. I used the new fabric to create a pouch for my new i-pad. For the back of the pouch, I used the luscious velvety "alligator" pattern fabric I purchased at MOOD in NYC.

Cathey: I decided to interpret Van Gough's "Starry Night." The piece is a collage with raw edge applique, angelina fibers, ribbons, organza, upholstery fabric, batiks,and tafeta. I used small dots of white glue to hold some of the pieces in place, then quilted it like crazy.

Melanie: My piece was inspired from "Quilted Symphony," by Gloria Loughman. The piece contains silks and my hand dyed cottons along with commercial batiks. My new favorite thing is incorporating a little silk in with the cottons.

Hope: I had lots of glitzy fabric I wanted to use in a piece. I decided to set it against a velvet backround. I chose a deep blue velvet instead of black and used reverse applique to create each "window," then placed a crystal inside each teardrop. I added some multicolored ribbon to set off the rows of opulent colors.

Seed Packet

After taking a couple of summer months off, we are back! We are all members of the Narragansett Bay Quilters' Association. The guild summer challenge was "Seed Packets" so we decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and do that project.

Marcia: Seeds under Organza
I decided to use real seeds in my project. I used 9 types of seeds, set them on a colored background then overlayed organza. I am sewing little decorative pockets around each seed group. I did not quite finish so you see pins in the organza. I like the way the glass heads of the pins set off each "packet" so I think I will use some seed beads in the finished project to get the same effect.

Linda: New York Village
I had a very busy summer and did not get a chance to make my seed packet. I did however, take a class, "Happy Villages," from Karen Eckmeier. This was a fun workshop. The "location" of your village is very much influenced by the fabrics chosen. I wanted a New York village so I chose predominately black and white with a little gold for New York glitz.

Cathey: New England Seeds
I was inspired by the falling leaves of autumn. The leaves/acorns etc. are the seeds of trees to come. To simulate the fall colors, I used a fall colored background, then used a gold paintstick on black for the gold background leaves and finally, colored some Lutradur for the foreground leaf.

Joan: Tuscan Village and Flower Seed Packet
I also took the "Happy Villages" workshop. My interpretation is from some of my travel photographs. I chose colors and a layout reminiscent of sunny Tuscany. A couple of the buildings have the names of the actual structures. Also included is a clock tower, steps and domes so prevalent in Italy.

For the Seed Packet project, I took this photograph at the raspberry farm in Windham, CT. I altered it in my computer, using the "posterize" feature to add interest. I then printed it on to white "pfd" fabric in 4 panels which I sewed together. I added printed lettering on more pdf. then quilted the entire piece.It won First Place in the NBQA Summer Challenge!

Hope: I had a lot of fun with this one. Anyone from the sixties will recognize this plant. I had fun tracking down what its flowers looked like. :) I beaded the center blossom and all along the inside of the binding.

Melanie: Corn Seeds
I love to garden but people who know me, know I am more about the vegetables than flowers so of course I chose a veggie: Corn. I searched images on the web for inspiration and ended up with this interpretation of an old fashioned seed packet. I used colored pencils to create the drawing on white pfd fabric. I then used textile medium to set the pencil coloring so it would be permanent and washable. I "trapunto-ed" the ear of corn and free motion quilted the entire piece. I used a "pillowcase" finishing because I thought it would make the project look more like a seed packet than using a binding.