festival of quilts Archives - Page 2 of 10

16th July 202416th July 2024

L’Merchie Frazier – Meet the Artist

L’Merchie Frazier is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who explores themes of Black identity in the Americas and beyond. Black and indigenous people have a shared history of over 500 years in unwritten, unrecognised and unacknowledged narratives about the spaces they occupy, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Join L’Merchie as she shares the stories behind her work.

L’Merchie Frazier: https://lmerchiefrazier.org/

Story Quilt by L'Merchie Frazier — Story Quilt by L’Merchie Frazier

“The journey to establishing selfhood and importance that is manifest in today’s “call to action” is a trek of reclaiming the right to self-possession and ownership with elevated voice, story and space. Importantly, the direct action to embrace the right to exist, claim one’s own self-worth, beauty and love is a marked effort that fuels the move from insignificance to significance, to matter.”

This exhibition celebrates the Decade of African Descended People declared by the United Nations, 2015 to 2025. The LookBook quilts, The Quilted Chronicles series, participates in the restorative aesthetic to promote dialogue via an explorative historical lens, to reclaim the lives and legacies of Black and Brown people, children and their communities across centuries of memory, places and activism.

L’Merchie’s quilts select moments to confront the impact of slavery and systemic racism.

The inspiration to create these quilts is supported by archived threads of petitions, speeches, organisations, lawsuits, writings, media, witnessed violence and protests. The experience is documented from the kidnapping of Africans and their arrivals in 16th century, to the American Revolution, through the Civil War and the 13th Amendment in 1865, through the end of American Reconstruction, in a continuum to the 21st Century.

Story Quilt by L'Merchie — Story Quilt by L’Merchie

Filmed at the Festival of Quilts 2023.

For a more inspiration, please browse the ‘Meet the Artist’ collection on my YouTube Channel.

26th June 202417th July 2024

Denise Labadie – Meet the Artist

Denise Labadie’s art quilts feature either Celtic megalithic stones and monoliths – think Stonehenge – or monastic ruins and passageways. They are known for their moodiness, emotion and surprisingly true-to-life realism. Each piece is created using appliqué and strip piecing and Denise’s unique hand-painted fabrics. Denise has won multiple awards at Quilt National (USA), and she’s had major exhibitions in the US and worldwide.

Join Denise as she shares her work inspired by her love of Ireland.

Denise Labadie: https://labadiefiberart.com/

Denise Labadie

“I use a wide variety of colours, fabrics, threads, and yarns in my work, and then construct the actual quilt the same way as a stone mason builds a wall – individually sizing and cutting out, piecing, and appliquéing each stone, one by one, working from the bottom up – each stone a foundation for the others that it supports or neighbours. In contrast to the realism of the stones, my skies and landscapes – which are central to the context of place and the timelessness of these sacred sites – are far more abstract. I hand paint almost all my fabric (from which – as described above – I then individually cut out each stone).

The realistic colour and texture of my stones is achieved by using multiple layers of sun-reactive transparent Seta color paints, plus various resists, in combination with (while wet) the aggressive folding, twisting, wrapping, bunching or pleating of the fabric, and (while drying) the application of sand, different types of salt crystals, sugar, dirt, and the like – basically, doing or using most anything that can influence or cause differential paint absorption, diffusion, blending, patterning, or mottling. Resulting fabrics can be remarkable.

I then use selective combinations of multiple appliqué techniques (reverse, turned edge, and raw edge), insetting, free-form strip piecing, couching, and “thread shadowing” (similar to thread painting) – plus an occasional very localised dab of paint – to achieve my trademark quilt top textures, lighting, depth of field, and shadowing and perspective. Throughout, full attention is given to proper craftsmanship, “sweating the details”, and technique precision.“ – Denise Labadie.

Filmed at the Festival of Quilts 2023.

For a more inspiration, please browse the ‘Meet the Artist’ collection on my YouTube Channel.

21st June 202417th July 2024

Joe Cunningham – Meet the Artist

Joe Cunningham has been a professional quilter for 44 years and has written a dozen books, many magazine articles, museum catalogue essays and papers on the subject of quilts. He has lectured at museums, universities and for quilt guilds and conferences internationally.

Join Joe as he shares his work inspired by his love of traditional quilts.

Joe Cunningham: https://www.joecunninghamquilts.com/

“After many years spent studying, copying and imitating 19th century quilts and quilt styles, I made the decision to create my own style. While these quilts seem to be foreign to the common ideas of the tradition, it was my studies of the tradition that showed me how to create freely and in my own abstract language”. His quilts can be found in major museums in the US and in many private collections.