Quilting Arts Magazine

I CONSIDER MYSELF a lover of new and innovative art quilting techniques. When I come across an art quilt with a style or technique that I haven’t seen before, a wave of delight comes over me and I want to learn how it’s made. Over the years, I’ve found myself launching into new artwork based on my attempts to try a new product, thread, style, or technique. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, resulting in a UFO that goes straight into my “might use this again later” bin. But the joy of that process is that I feel I’m on the cutting edge of what’s new or, at the very least, I am continuously learning and challenging myself to grow. There have been times when I set a project aside…

Our Readers Respond! In the last issue, we asked our readers to respond to the prompt “Get Back to It!” and to show us how they adjust to the changing season into fall, whether it inspires their creativity or makes them wistful for other times. Thank you to our readers for sharing their work and inspiring us all. Dear QUILTING ARTS, I love the fall but my Oriental poppies bloom in the spring and I want to continue seeing them. I decided to create a wall hanging so I could enjoy looking at them throughout the fall and winter. For the background I used ideas from Radiant Landscapes by Gloria Loughman and batiks from my stash. The 3-D flowers, stems, and leaves are my own creation with no pattern. I made the poppies…

Laura Kemshall is an artist working in Shropshire, UK. Inspired by landscape and daily life, her work often begins in sketchbooks before evolving into quilts, prints, or paintings. With a love of drawing as the foundation, her work often has a strong figurative element combined with pattern and abstract fields of color and visual texture. When stitch is used, it is intensely worked and often layered with multiple applications of hand and machine quilting. designmatters.thinkific.com Amy E. Milne has been the executive director of the Quilt Alliance since 2006. She has over two decades of experience as a nonprofit administrator, educator, and artist. Amy has overseen the expansion of the Quilt Alliance’s oral history projects, including the creation of the Go Tell It! project, as well as Quilt Alliance events such as…

i have used the Picsart app for years. It is my launching point for big projects, my digital sketchbook, and my visual problem solver. It’s my favorite app. When I was teaching middle school, part of the curriculum was teaching students to work with 21st-century tools. For me that meant helping students learn to use the computer, tablets, and even their phones as creative tools. My computer design unit required students to take photographs with a digital camera, upload the file to their school account, and alter the image using a variety of tools. Over time, I added skills like drawing and designing on tablets. Of course, middle school students dove right in and were experts in no time at all. In the last few years of teaching, I had to find…

WHEN I FIRST DISCOVERED online fabric printing services, the scope of my art changed forever. Before then, I was limited to printing on small store-bought fabric sheets using a home printer. When I began designing my art on the computer, my pieces were restricted to these small sheets and the whims of home printers. Along came Spoonflower and I realized: no matter how big or small, if I could dream it and design it, I could print it! At first, I was ordering multiple fat quarters that cost about $10 each. I had a series of 16" × 20" bird pieces that fit nicely on that precut size and I had six separate images printed. Then it dawned on me that I could have fit four of these pieces on one…

While I was in Melbourne, Australia, for a lecture at the Australasian Quilt Convention this spring, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Gloria Loughman in her home. She lives by the sea, on the beautiful Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria. She served up a lunch fit for a foodie, with great conversation. Her husband Tony was a gem about the intrusion of a visitor. The highlight of the afternoon was her studio. I was in heaven. After poring over her storage, processes, fabrics, room layout, and daily habits, we settled on discussing early quilts that made her feel like she got her start in the quilting world. Here’s how it went. BRANDY: Gloria, please tell me how your quilting story began. GLORIA: In the early 1990s, after making some traditional quilts and…