Lark Books seeks excellent images to publish in a juried collection of quilts for 500 Quilts, the latest in their 500 Series to be published in Spring 2010.   The announcement reads:

Both art quilts and traditional quilts are welcome in fabric and other media. Diverse designs, materials, and techniques are desired, from traditional to cutting edge. We accept high-quality transparencies, slides, and digital images. There is no entry fee. Important note: Lark Books will only publish photos of entries containing text and images that are free of copyright, or for which the artist (or approved institution) holds copyright.

Artists will receive full acknowledgment within the book, one complimentary copy, and discounts on the purchase of additional books. Artists retain copyright of their work.
Entries must be postmarked by October 24, 2008.

Guidelines and entry forms are now available on Lark’s website:
<http://www.larkbooks.com/submissions/artist-submissions>

Tired of boring? Got the end-of-summer blues? Here are some quilts with uncommon kink and energy”
“Boo Davis is a designer, illustrator and quiltmaker living in Seattle. She spent much of her youth cozied up under her grandmother’s quilt listening to Ozzy. As a grown-up metalhead and design geek, the intersection of cute and evil is what she finds most compelling. Applying a heavy metal spin to the traditional craft of quilting seemed like a natural merging of her two great loves.”

A few years back, I was in an artquilt crit group with a woman who struck me as a genius. I thought that she was far too modest about her talents. After running into a mutual friend, I was delighted to learn that she has been working hard and in turn is getting the recognition that she is due – possibly proving that there is goodness, balance and karma in this world.

The artist is Tricia McKellar. By day, she is an instructional technologist at North Carolina State University. Nights & weekends, she is an artist. Like so many of us, she is fitting together the disparate parts of her life, but she does not segregate them. Her work with technology and fine machines inform her art. Through imagery, photography, McKellar provides beautiful insight into the manmade world. Her media is silk, dye and printer. She explains her quilts and collages:

My shibori is a modern adaptation of traditional Japanese hand-dye methods. Shibori techniques produce patterned fabric with subtle variations. These patterns are natural, organic, complex and somehow, simple.

Digital shibori is my process that involves hand-dyeing shibori fabrics, then photographing and digitally altering, sometimes collaging, the digital shibori imagery. After working for a couple of years dyeing shibori and creating digital images to print on silk, it occurred to me that my shibori would be an interesting element in my digital collages. Sometimes these digital shibori collages are printed on silk and quilted, sometimes they are printed with my archival inkjet printer. Quiltart Gallery

Sadly what is lacking in viewing McKellar’s works on the internet is a sense of scale – many of these pieces are quite large – and of the textural richness of the washed silk. If you are near any of Tricia McKellar’s showings, it is well worth a visit.

A quilt artist-outlaw, Ai Kijima’s kaleidoscopic art sometimes rubs on the limitations of copyright infringement, especially with Disney (Mickey Mouse, Snow White, etc.). Reusing found fabrics, Kijima integrates the pop art Western humor with and Eastern sense of design, created fused and quilted art works which can be both delightful and thought-provoking.

“Born and raised in Tokyo and educated as a visual artist at the Chicago Art Institute, Ai Kijima similarly fuses influences from Eastern and Western cultures into new outcomes in quilted textile panels. By scouring garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores in Asia, Europe and North America, the artist gathers vintage domestic fabrics such as bed sheets, curtains, pillowcases, clothing, apron, handkerchiefs and tablecloths which she uses to create quilted, fabric collages that contain ironic and often seemingly incongruous juxtapositions of cultural, consumer and religious iconography that are, at their core, representative of a Japanese aesthetic. Kijima’s work straddles the divide between Japanese and American pop culture. The saturation and diversity of images in her work celebrate pluralism, mass media and rampant consumerism and portrays a world filled with contradictions. Redefining craft”

An interview at PixelSurgeon gives a deeper understanding of Kijima’s working process:

“[PixelSurgeon]Your choices of found materials are very interesting and immediately stand out as intriguing because they seem rather surreal and incongruous with the style and technique of the work. A lot of the archetypal icons of American childhood are present in your work. There is Santa Claus, a whole host of Disney characters, Spiderman, Harry Potter, and even Thomas the Tank Engine. What draws you to depict these characters so prominently in your work? Is this an outsider’s perspective on American culture, or simply a celebration of childhood? One of the things I notice is that a lot of the elements you use are synonymous to many people with the excesses of American capitalism and particularly with the way that consumerism is forced onto people from early childhood through aggressive marketing. For instance, Coca-Cola, Disney and Hollywood, companies or institutions that forcefully market themselves to young people all over the world and that have become purveyors of global pulp consumerist culture, are strongly represented in your work. Is there a darker message in your work concerning the global penetration of American style pulp culture and consumerism?

[Kijima]… When I started to collect images from pop culture, I wasn’t so sure I was going to use them for my artwork but I just couldn’t resist having those images. In 2002, I started to use popular images in my work. I remember deciding to make art that contained a universal point of view that is larger than my own perspective as a woman and Japanese native. I use popular images because they are an accessible language for many people. I am trying to present the world around me, the world full of contradictions, without having any particular moral position.”

Free Spirit fabrics offers a line of unique quilt fabrics by young and/or established designers (Jane Sassman, Libby Lehman.) They also offer a series of downloadable quilt patterns for each line. It’s a way to sell the fabrics, but the patterns go beyond that. Most of them are really interesting patterns. They have been created to emphasize the best qualities of each designer’s line.

To the left is the Lightning Bugs collection by Heather Ross. Her fabrics feature small sketches of favorite moments from childhood:

“Dream Bikes celebrates that little bicycle with the banana seat that we all wished for, Beach Day memorializes all of the goldfish we have loved (and lost?) as well as the trips to the beach we take with our families (Heather’s entire family is depicted in this print, her brother in law tosses her tiny nephew in the shallow water, her grandparents snooze on the beach, and her little niece snorkels into deep water) and friends.”

You can flip through the fabric galleries or go directly to the pattern download page for an overview of the possibilities. Some other of my favorites are:

• Eyewise
• Fiesta
• Finlandia

CQmagazine online has just released its latest issue, which features an interview with Thread Magic author, Ellen Anne Eddy. A short excerpt (CQM asks the question, “How would you label your type of work?” Eddy’s answer:

“I’ve called it thread magic for a long time. It’s a fusion of a lot of fiber techniques: hand-dyed cotton, direct and cut away applique, machine embroidery, thread painting, and fiber collage. I tend to define it differently for different groups. If I’m speaking to a group of quilters I tell them it’s an embroidered applique. For fiber artists I’d tell them it’s reconstructed fiber. For folk who really don’t have any preconceived notions about fiber work, I tell them they’re embroidered tapestries. Basically, I’m using a number of skills that all fall between the cracks to be something fairly unique. Words tend to fail me. But that’s a fair description.”

Read the full article at Ellen Anne Eddy “Queen of Embellished Critters” by Pat Winter.

It seems that the common, romantic notion of our ancestors sitting by the fire, quilting, may be entirely wrong. An article on Colonial quilters at womenfolk.com points out the silliness of this idea, just from the practical issues of the amount of other work to be done and the lack of lighting:

“Even the image of sewing by the fire is dubious. Not to say that no one ever quilted by the fire but it was far too dim for any fine stitching. In fact all artificial lighting of the time was quite meager. Add to that the short days and long nights in winter and it makes sense that women’s diaries and journals tell us that most of the quilting was done from May through November….”

By about 1840 the textile industry had grown to the point that fabric was readily available to most families. Only then did quilting become a common way for American women to express their creativity. Interestingly it was after quilting became a widespread activity that somehow the idea of quilting being common in colonial times became a romanticized myth. In truth, “‘Quilts of any kind were rare in New England in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and it is unlikely that New England women were making quilts in any number until at least the 1750s.’”

The page has a timeline of quilting history (left sidebar), which shows quilt type – mostly beginning in the 1750s. Notable are the dates:
1813 ~ 1840 Establishment of US Textile Mills
1845 ~ 1855E Early Sewing Machines

image: from the Smithsonian Collection: Appliqued and Embroidered quilt top signed by Frances Jolly; NC. Dated 1839.

A bit of self indulgence, humor me, please. My dog, China Rose, died on Wednesday, after 13 wonderful, loyal years. She was world’s largest AKC registered sheltie. Most people thought that she was a border collie. I miss her terribly and am a bit obsessed with dogs today (even though I have three cats who are willing to cheer me up). I decided to spend a bit of time in the world of dog quilts (pictorial image, not quilts for dogs).

Sharon Malec has created a set of very charming and surprisingly realistic dog and cat quilts. Normally, I find quilt kits to be a bit restrictive (for me). These kits have a sense of immediacy and spontaneity derived from the liveliness of her depictions. Even the animals in repose seem to emanate character. One of the local quilt shops has the Siamese cat quilt made up. It looks just as delightful in person as on the web site.

Tanya of Berlin Embroidery creates some hyper-realistic dog portraits, all hand stitched and done from your snapshot of your pet. I am amazed by her ability to create a photo realistic image using embroidery floss. At the same time, I wish that there was a touch of passion in the works. Her cat portrait gets a bit of the sassiness of the subject. In fact, I expect that cat to whack me with her claws at any second.

Creative Chick Studios, (a.k.a Susan Sorrell) has the animal portraits that come closest to my heart. Her works are wild, energetic pictures of animals that get to the heart of how I feel about my pets, rather than focusing on how they actually look. The dog above is by Sorrell, who describes her work simply: “Whoopi Wear is a tribute to my dog and studio helper.”

Floss (right) is a book that I discovered on the day that China Rose died. It could have been written about her. Rework a few of the white patches on Floss, and you would have a portrait of China Rose. More importantly, it tells the story of the dog’s love for soccer. China, in her youth was also known as the Rainbow Soccer Dog, unofficial mascot of a local soccer club. Yes, she could head the ball and out-maneuver any 12 year old kid. She had a bit of a problem with the concept of the goal and scoring points. She just played for the love of the game.