We had our first reveal of the year and of course, the quilts did not disappoint.
Memory or Childhood Memory
 |
Moroccan Kasbah by Ann Sanderson
36" x 36"
|
Artist Statement: I made this piece after traveling to Moracco. We visited several kasbahs and found the fortresses so interesting. I used cotton cloth, painted and machine quilted. I was challenged with using paint (acrylic) on cloth and was also challenged with perspective.
 |
Blustery Breeze by Karle deProsse
18" x 28" |
Artist Statement: My teen years were spent in the countryside in Massachusetts where the maple and other colorful deciduous trees were in abundance. We would rake the leaves, and the wind would scatter them again. This made for a fun time jumping in the piles as well. I love autumn leaves and wind. This inspired me to try to capture the effect of the wind in motion. I used cotton fabric, metallic & cotton thread, beads, fusible web and solvy. My design and construction ideas changed in the process of creating this piece. Originally the leaves were to be fused on. After cutting them out and sprinkling them over the surface (with fusible web on the back side), I liked how they lifted up a bit. I changed my concept to only the center seam holding them against the background. I had to back each leaf with fabric to 'get rid of' the fusible aspect. Then I realized that I had planned to quilt the leaves after fusing them to create the branching veins. So, each tiny piece needed to have veins sewn on them before attaching to the background. Holding tiny pieces was hard. I pinned them to tear away stabilizer and washable tear-away stabilizer and found Solvy to tear off the best. The beads represent the chilly breeze.
 |
Art Deco Scramble by Lynda Lasich
39" x 46" |
Artist Statement: The silk used in this quilt came from draperies, ties, shirts, sari and hand dyed. My niece sent me silk valances that she no longer used. They formed the background. Since they had been in my stash for several years, it was time to do something with them. I used all silk fabric, cotton batting and superior thread. The challenge for me was to create a quilting design used as sashing between blocks. After seeing an art deco gate, I had my inspiration. The silk all had interfacing.
 |
Reflections on Summers Past by Karin Polli
35" x 24" |
Artist Statement: This depicts the location where I spent summer vacations as a child. It is my grandparent's place in Vineland, NJ. My inspiration was a 1934 picture taken just after my parents purchased the property. My father and his cousin are sitting on the front steps. I painted the sky. I used cotton fabric and hand embroidered the signs. The figures are painted with tsukineko inks. I pieced the sun. The back is commercial fabric. It depicts 1950's diners across the USA. My family traveled across the country from LA of SF to Vineland, NJ by car during summers to visit my grandparents. We stopped and motels and diners along the way.
Reflections of Hawaii
 |
Pele's Playground by Tracy Visher
17" x 24" |
Artist Statement: This is an a-typical look at one of Hawaii's natural wonders. I didn't want to do a saccharine beach/palm tree scene, and I didn't want to focus on the Lahaina devastation. Instead, I decided on one of the volcano calderas, mid-eruption. I sued commercial cottons, batiks, cheese cloth, Angelina fibers and sheet, hand-dyed cheesecloth, cotton and synthetic cording, acrylic paint, painted and stitched silk. This piece was a BIG engineering challenge. How to raise the sides of the caldera, how to show the cooling lava's "flow", how to show the texture and fire of the throat. I used cotton cording to build up the caldera wall. I used smaller cording first, attaching it to the orange "base layer" fabric, then stitching through the top batik layer, so they ad relief. I remade the caldera hot lava several times, until it had enough texture and head to read as hot and bubbling.
Flowers
 |
'Morning, Glory by Tracy Visher
12" x 12" |
Artist Statement: I ran across a small piece of wrapping paper I had saved years ago, that depicted some watercolor stylized morning glories. I used commercial cottons, batiks, tulle, velvet, inktense ink blocks, silk, monofilament thread, fancy fiber, embroidery thread. I wanted the piece to be 'semi representational'. I really enjoyed working in such a small space, a new experience! I also enjoyed creating texture with all of the different fabrics and their finishes and patterns.
Marvelous Marbles
 |
Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Losing My Marbles by Marylee Drake
25" x 29" |
Artist Statement: I used marble fabric that I made last summer for the hair, and the marbles. Several years ago I took a class from Melissa Averinos and I learned to make faces. I wanted to make a face using my marble fabric. It was fun playing with the various design opportunities. I used hand dyed background batiks, commercial prints and hand marbled fabric. I did some thread embellishment. My head sometimes feels like its bursting open with ideas - these are the marbles streaming out of my head and into the bowl.
 |
If Van Gogh Played with Marbles by Lynn Tubbe
6" x 20" |
Artist Statement: A group of us had fun creating marbled fabric. This was a fun way to use some of it. I wanted to make a small wall hanging to fit on the side of my kitchen cabinet. Irises are conveniently tall and thin flowers. And Van Gogh is forever linked with irises. In addition to the obvious raw edge fused construction, and cotton fabrics and thread, I used Terial Magic to stiffen and fold the marbled fabrics.
 |
OOPS! by Shelli Fried
12" x 22" |
Artist Statement: The marbles spilling out of the bag are made from marbled fabric. I have wanted to use the marbled fabric I created at a Sierra Sisters gathering in 2023 and this was the perfect opportunity. I used hand-dyed marbled fabric, commercial fabric, super stiff interfacing, acrylic paint, reused produce bag, e6000 glue, batting and superior thread. I was very pleased that everything for this project came from my stash. I wanted the marbles to stand out on top of the background and discovered that I had some really stiff interfacing that I had used in a previous piece. The biggest challenge was hand cutting the marbles and then hand cutting the interfacing to be just slightly smaller. I painted the edges of the interfacing circles with blue paint before attaching the marbled fabric so the edges would blend in.
