Local Continuing Education Opportunities

This is Floris Flam, the gallery blog editor for January. The following material was written by Betty Ford, one of our gallery's art quilters, and discusses a workshop she took on fabric painting.

We've discussed how our gallery members travel to attend workshops to improve their technical and design skills and to master new techniques.  Sometimes we have the opportunity to learn without leaving town.  The Washington area is rich in learning opportunities for fiber artists such as the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.

Recently, gallery member Betty Ford learned new fabric painting techniques from gallery member Julie Booth at a series of classes sponsored by the Art League.  It consisted of seven weekly classes at which Julie presented various techniques where the students had time to experiment and learn by doing and to produce a large number of exciting samples. Here is the report of a happy student.

"The class began with our creating painted background fabrics using Pebeo SetaColor — fabrics on which we could layer other surface design techniques. These backgrounds were created in a number of ways, some resulting in pieces that were quite plain:

while others were more complex:

On these and other backgrounds we stamped, using stamps we carved ourselves or made by other processes. Stamps also included natural materials such as leaves.

"Julie, recipient of the Potomac Fiber Arts Guild’s 2011 Margaret M. Conant grant, has spent the year studying and experimenting with “kitchen” resists. She shared a number of these techniques with us . Below is my fabric made using a flour paste resist on a pale blue background that I painted in the class.

"This fabric was made by using rubber bands as resists then adding paint to the bunched up fabric. To me this piece has a very gardenlike appearance so I will probably make it into a whole-cloth quilt.

"Our entire class agreed that making gelatin plate monoprints was exciting and produced some of the most useful pieces. This is a completed small quilt using one of these prints.

"Of course, for a quilter, seeing this work in a finished piece is the major satisfaction for all the fun of painting fabric. The little quilt below was made by the “wipe-up” technique — dribbling paint on mylar then doing as the name suggests.

Betty concludes, "Excellent class!" I think that, seeing Betty's photos of both her fabrics and her finished work, you'll agree.

Art Quilt Inspirations

Hello, I am Floris Flam, our Gallery's blogger for the month of January. I am an art quilter specializing in small wall hangings. I dye most of the fabrics used in my quilts and also dye and paint silk scarves. This month, I plan to have several discussions of current art quilt trends and techniques as exemplified by the work of our Gallery members.

We are often asked about our inspiration, the source of the idea or image behind a quilt. Often a quilt is inspired by a photograph taken by the artist. The photo may be translated into fabric following the original very closely, as seen in a quilt I based on a photo I took of an art nouveau doorway in Palermo, Sicily.

Sometimes a quilt may start with a photo inspiration, but look nothing like the original photo. I took a photo on the campus of the University of St. Thomas in Houston because I liked the angles of the buildings. I traced my photo, sliced the tracing into vertical segments, rearranged them, then based my quilt on a section of the new drawing.



On the other hand, a quilt may be based on something as commonplace as the pattern on the bottom of a foam hamburger container. Several years ago, I did a series of quilts using the geometric shapes on one of these for a series of quilts. Here's one of these:

Sometimes a quilt may be entirely nonrepresentational, with the artist working from a group of fabrics she has chosen and without a plan. I often work this way. Here's an example of this kind of quilt:

Betty Ford, another quilter in our Gallery, says that her inspiration usually springs from nature, especially remembered images from early childhood on their farm in Kentucky. Her quilts begin with a sketch, photo — her own or others' — or a painting. She collects art and photography books for this purpose and has shoe boxes full of postcards from art museums and galleries. She also makes thumbnail sketches while watching TV, clips ads that she glues in a sketch book, saves any image that appeals to her, such as napkins and greeting cards. She constantly reviews this material because some appeal one day and others another. She uses primarily hand-dyed fabric, her own and those of some other dyers. Frequently ideas come from the fabrics themselves. This quilt, Winter, was inspired by the photo of a shower curtain Betty saw in a home furnishings catalog.