Classes

Here’s a schedule of current and upcoming classes taught by members of Fiber Art Options:


House Rules
with Susan Brubaker Knapp
Online at Joggles.com
Starts Nov. 3; $50 for five lessons.


Embellished Travel Journal and Memory Book
with Janet Lasher
Online at Joggles.com
Starts Nov. 12; $38 for three lessons.

Fiber Art Options welcomes two new members

Last month, Fiber Art Options brought two new members into the group: K. Grace Howes and Deborah Michael Langsam. You can read more about them in the posts that follow this one. Welcome, y’all! – Susan

Deborah Michael Langsam

“Circuitous” might be the word to describe Deborah’s path to art. The colors, shapes, and textures of fungal spores led her to a doctorate in botany from Duke University and a career as a biologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. After twenty two years her attraction to the visual and tactile took a different turn … this time in the direction of textiles.

Working now as “Barking Dog Fiber Art,” Deborah creates contemporary wall-hangings and fiber art wearables. Her wall-hangings combine traditional quilting techniques and fabrics with an array of unique materials — photo transfers, beads, and found objects — to form original contemporary designs that play with color, texture, and light. Many of her pieces incorporate urban images and some of her most recent works draw on these images to form fabric mosaics and landscapes.

“Fiber art marries two of my passions … science and art,” says Deborah. “At the core, science and art projects are pretty similar: you usually need a little precision, a bunch of trial-and-error experimentation, and then a whole lot of creative problem-solving. And just as in science - where there’s always a story behind a discovery – there’s also always a story behind the fabric and stitching.”

In addition to private collections across the country, Deborah’s work can be found at Maddi’s Gallery and at Beet Contemporary Crafts & Functional Art (both in Charlotte, NC). The proceeds from Barking Dog Fiber Art are donated to SupportWorks, a non-profit charity in Charlotte, NC that helps people find and form support groups and research medical information.

E-MAIL: dmlangsa@uncc.edu


Havdalah I (2007) 20" x 20"


Tikkun Olam II (2006) 15" x 44"


Under the Watchful Eye of Queen Charlotte (2009) 28" x 46"


Under the Watchful Eye of Queen Charlotte detail (2009) 28" x 46"


Me'irah's Quilt: Study of Torah is Equal to Them All (2007) 33" x 22"


Driving Up to the Penguin (2008) 25" x 58"


I Wish I Had a River (2007) 15" x 39"


I Wish I Had a River detail

K. Grace Howes

“I have always been fascinated by fabric – it’s texture, its versatility, its ability to be manipulated and still be a tactile piece of woven material.”

K. Grace Howes has worked with fiber for most of her life, first making garments for clients in her native Bahamas then, with a family move to North Carolina, shifting her focus to quilts. This shift in how she worked with fabric eventually evolved into the fiber art pieces she now produces.

Grace’s work is a process of exploration whereby she creates pieces that are mostly abstract in nature using colour and form in a non-representational way. As she describes it “I play endlessly with line and shape, letting a piece speak to me as I try to map out its formation.”

These days you can find Grace in her studio making quilted artworks, playing with paper and fabric to produce her handmade journals and sketchbooks or up to her elbows dyeing or adding surface design to fabric.

With her fascination for colour, deeply rooted in her cultural history, and a connection and adherence to her own spiritual authenticity, Grace’s journey in art making is a never ending process.

WEBSITE: www.redbarn-studios.com
BLOG: http://www.redbarn-studios.com/blog/
ETSY: www.redbarnstudios.etsy.com
E-MAIL: grace@redbarn-studios.com


Red Moon (2009) 17-1/2" x 19"


Mother Love (2008) 29" x 25"


GreenPiece (2008) 10" x 9"


The Place to Be (2007) 11" x 9"


Breathe (2009) journal

What next?

I think I am almost done with the embroidery on this piece. I have really enjoyed working on it, and it was the perfect thing for me to take to the beach last week; very portable and small. I have decided to call it “Petri Dish Promenade,” because the circles are starting to look more and more like the circular petri dishes used to cultivate bacteria in the lab. Now I have to decide how I am going to finish this piece. I'm considering a frame of pieced hand-dyed fabrics.

The entire piece is shown above, and a detail shot is below. You can see more info and detail photos on my blog here.

Surface Design Conference 2009

Janet just got back from the Surface Design Conference held in Kansas City.

Hooray for summer and BBQ - which is everywhere this time of year in Kansas City. I had an amazing time.

All the exhibitions were wonderful and covered all types of fiber art, including encaustic, machine and hand embroidery, some amazing felting, knitting and crochet, beading, textile design, and well - everything!!

It is a wonderful conference with something for everyone, lectures on art v. craft as it relates to fiber, demonstrations, great talks on ethnic textile traditions, and multiple day workshops.

Alice Kettle's extremely large and heavily embroidered tapestries were on exhibition at the Belger Gallery - they were spectacular. She gave a talk one evening and discussed how she works - for hours on an industrial machine to stitch these heavy pieces onto a canvas foundation. She uses every type of thread working from the top and the bottom of the pieces.

Here are a few photos taken at Alice's exhibition.

I took 2 great workshops - one using on textile design and was lucky enough to assist Els van Baarle in her 4 day Batik workshop. I have posted a batik book I worked on during that workshop on my blog click over and take a look!

I am back in the studio for at least 2 solid weeks - I will post on progress soon!

Susan! - what wonders you are making with the samples from our workshops together!

Peaceful handwork

I started working on this yesterday, and I’m completely hooked. I think it is because I’ve been doing way too much computer work, and I needed to do something by hand, something tactile and fluid. Something where my brain could mellow and the work would take me where it wanted to go.

This started out as white fabric that was partially transformed in a soy wax batik class with fellow FAO member Janet Lasher (see previous post). Here’s what it looked like after that class, but before the wax was removed and before it was washed:

Here are some more shots of what it looks like now. I’m embroidering it with lots of different kinds of floss and thread, and couching down bits of thready fluff that came off fabric yardage after I washed it.

ooooh, this is highly addictive.

Linda's Latest

I have finished a small (16 x 16") embellished piece that does not have a name at this time.

It was basically an embellishment experiment using painted background fabric, metallic quillting thread, metallic mesh, buttons and soft modeling clay and beads.

Since completing this I have been concentrating on the first of my orchid quilts for our Fiber Art Options project. First I sketched the layout from my photo of blue orchids.

After that I chose a background fabric that I dye-painted and commercial hand dyes as shown. This is my first time working with bamboo batting. Will let you know how I like it.

-Linda-

Nancy’s Hemlock, continued

I have finished the machine quilting on the hemlock piece. As you can see, the echo quilting leaves wonderful patterns on the background negative spaces. The larger the background area, the more I can built up a rhythm to the quilting.

I showed the threads that I was going to consider in an earlier posting. My original background threads were too light. Here are the ones that I actually used. I ended up buying that Sulky thread 3 from the left for the background. Now I will do the hand embellishments with embroidery floss.

I love thread and hate to see the end threads being discarded. So I save them for each piece. I gave the threads to my friend Janet who will use them as base threads for her wonderful machine sewn cords. Here is the thread pile from my next quilt. Janet, more are waiting for you!!

Am considering "Stitches for Socrates" as the name of this piece. Feedback on this name will be greatly appreciated. - Nancy-

Janet's new website is LIVE!

Fiber Art Options member, Janet A. Lasher has updated her website and it is now live. She has added portfolio sections that now include her beadwork, ArtCloth, fiber textured pieces, and wearables. There are also pages for a few of the project she has been working on and descriptions of some of her more popular workshops.

Click over to take a peek into her studio. http://janetalasher.com

Susan’s work featured in 2010 QA Calendar

I was at Quilt Market last week and found out there that two of my pieces will be featured in the 2010 Quilting Arts calendar! I’m on the cover and the month of October. This is a shot of me with Pokey Bolton, the editor of Quilting Arts:

The 2010 Quilting Arts Calendar is already available for pre-order through Interweave’s online store.

Well, while I don't quite like it yet, here's the latest view of the Tightrope Walker that you first glimpsed back in an early April post.   I still think this has too much boring background, so my next step is to add in his story.  That is,  assuming that I can figure out a way to do lettering that shows up enough to be interesting. Stay tuned!  -PJ-

Get a free pattern for Susan’s evening bags

If you missed last year’s issue of Quilting Arts Gifts, which contained my designs for three different evening bags, you can now download the patterns and instructions for free! It’s in a new ebook called “7 Quilted Bag Patterns: Handmade Quilt Bags from Quilting Arts.” My bags are #2, 3 and 4. Just go to the Quilting Arts website by clicking here. If you make up one of my bags, I’d love to see photos and hear about it!

Lepidoptera finished!

Lepidoptera
by Susan Brubaker Knapp (2009)
Cotton fabric, wool/polyester batting, fabric paint, cotton thread. 39" x 39"

I finished this piece, “Lepidoptera,” a while ago, but we’ve had so much rain here lately that I couldn’t find a good time to take nice photos. I usually shoot them outside. This aftternoon, after a day of much fog and gloom, the clouds parted and I ran outside to take a few detail shots. Here they are:



Lepidoptera is the order of insects that includes butterflies and moths.
Can you tell that it started with this photo I took in my garden a few years ago?

This is a Painted Lady butterfly. It has wonderful patterns on its wings, but it is not very brightly colored. I used the patterns and completely changed the colors. My quilt is a bit psychedelic in comparison to the butterfly!

Besides being the first wholecloth painted quilt I’ve ever done, it is the first quilt I faced, rather than bound, and the first quilt I made using batting made of wool and polyester (recommended by my friend Nancy G. Cook, who uses it in all her work). I liked it a lot. “Lepidoptera” is also the first piece I have quilted with Aurifil threads, and I loved working with them.

Aurifil noticed I was using their thread, and asked if they could display “Lepidoptera” in their booth at Quilt Market next week. I was thrilled. If you are going, check it out there!

More Progress on Nancy’s Hemlock

Set up for quilting: I use an open-toe embroidery foot. Before quilting, I double check for good thread balance in top and bobbing on a sample quilt sandwich. The open foot allows me complete visibility of where the needle will go. I get a better stitch when the feed dogs are engaged. It can be tedious but I prefer the stitch quality.

Basting Threads: I remove the basting stitches as I get to them. If I run over them, they can be more difficult to remove. A pair of pointed tweezers helps remove any embedded threads.

Thread Painting: After outlining the design to stabilize the sandwich, I then do the thread painting of the designs using my hands to stretch the sandwich flat as it goes under the needle. This is the stage where the details of the design really come to life.

Importance of Specimens: One of the little cones turned sideways was confusing, the specimen helped clarify lines. Check out the size comparison of the specimen to my design.

Echo Quilting: Once the outlining and the thread painting are completed, I begin the echo quilting. The echo quilting on Hawaiian quilts has always fascinated me, so I riff off them with machine quilting to emphasize the negative spaces (the spaces around the designs) on my quilts. I love the rhythm and texture that builds up.

Chocolate: The first round of quilting is the most difficult and time consuming as that is when many of the details are filled which requires lots of turning of the sandwich and short lines of stitching. I line up the next round of quilting with the presser foot so that the previous line just shows inside the foot. After about 3-4 rounds, the quilting gets easier with smoother curved quilting lines and begins to go faster. The first several quilting rounds are tedious and a piece of chocolate helps me gather strength for the next round. I finish the quilting by going back into the small isolated areas of background and quilt them. Again, chocolate comes to the rescue. The quilt seems totally different when the quilting is done. This is why I quilt rather than paint.

Blogger Jill asked why I use heavy weight fabric on the back. Jill, it reduces the likelihood that I will have any tucks in the backing fabric. Good question.

Blogger Valerie – hope this answered some questions about quilting.

We really appreciate hearing from those following our blog.

-- Nancy Cook