In this new showcase I’m featuring four Modern Quilters that you will love!
Russell Barratt
I grew up in a creative house where art and craft were always important and my mother often made our clothes. I continued that tradition and have made clothes, costumes and accessories for many years. I began making quilts as a way to use all the vintage fabrics and clothes that I had collected. I’m mostly self taught, along with a few youtube tutorials.
My work is often based around memories and nostalgia of home life from my childhood and teenage years reacting against my boredom growing up in a small town. Pink, orange and cobalt blue are my favorite colors, I’ll often use them as polka dots across a quilt.
My favorite part of the process is putting together fabrics, and lying them out on the floor. I incorporate some pieced patchwork usually along with appliquéd whole garments or shapes. I enjoy occasionally mixing in some traditional patterns to acknowledge quilting history and add contrast. I use exclusively secondhand fabric and clothes, deconstructing and reusing each item brings in a sense of familiarity and helps build a new story. In this way I feel that each quilt is a collaboration.
Susan Michael
The first quilt I made was a Bugs Bunny baby blanket for my I year old son’s first birthday, (’94). It was made with a hand me down machine from a friend. I started teaching quilt making in the late 90’s to help pay for the purchase of a brand-new machine.
This led me to draft block patterns for classes for my students. Which, led to me writing a few quilt patterns for classes. I have always been able to work spontaneously without a written pattern and this has been the direction I have taken with my art pieces. In 2016 I began creating work for exhibition spaces.
I use intuitive design to create abstract, geometric, pieced fabric quilts. Most of my work is nonrepresentational, and process based using scrap bits of fabrics. Though I have a general idea of the size I truly let the work evolve in the process of making.
When I started, I felt that the compositions were about filling in the blank spaces. Now, I value negative space as part of the design. I love incorporating shapes of various scale in the same work. I love freeform design, it’s like writing a haiku; instantaneous, and ephemeral. A piece that I am working on can only be made moment by moment.
Jody Alexander
My name is Jody Alexander, I live in California, and I consider myself a fiber and book artist. I began art making as a book artist: papermaking, printing and bookbinding. Over the years stitching made its way from the book spine onto the pages of my books, and I began to incorporate textiles into my work. Now I work
mainly with textiles and create wall pieces, books, garments, objects, and installations. Japanese textiles, old French linens, and anything mended are inspiring to me and I examine and learn from any that cross my path. Currently, I incorporate hand printing, cyanotypes, natural dying, and found textiles into my work. Lately, imagery that I use in my pieces are photos from my travels as well as from day-to-day sightings, and stencils that I create and print.
The colors that are presently making their way into my work are predominantly blues, browns, and black. I love how blue and brown look together and those are colors that I’m able to achieve in the processes I use: cyanotypes, toned cyanotypes, and natural dyeing with walnuts, oak galls, and acorns.
When starting a piece I plan very little other than what kind of “thing” it will be (book, wall piece, garment, etc.) I start making and let shape, imagery, and balance guide me. I like my pieces to look like there were created over time and as a result of use, and need, and care.
People often assume that I’m a quilter when viewing my work but I have never made a quilt until this year! I recently started taking a local community class where we are taught to make quilts in exchange for donating them to charity. I finished one crib/lap sized quilt that has been donated and have started another. In between, I made one for myself out of scraps left over from my dressmaking. While I’ve always admired the skill of quilters I admire what you all do more than ever!