In this new showcase I’m happy to introduce to you these fantastic quilters!
Audrey Esarey
I started quilting in 2005 with an invitation to take a quilting class by my (then future) mother-in-law. I continued to take classes and workshops to learn new techniques and started to experiment with color. In 2018, I set a personal goal to have a quilt to hang in a juried quilt show, and this is when I started to explore and define my personal quilting style. Since then, I have created quilts that focus on precision piecing, paper piecing, and curved piecing. Many people know me as the girl who makes circle quilts! I use many of the traditional piecing techniques I learned over the years to construct my modern quilt designs. I love color, and I don’t work within a defined color palette, but I enjoy incorporating black and white into my designs. I often try to work with a new palette for each quilt to expand my use and knowledge of color and try interesting combinations. I am inspired by bold and colorful graphic designs and screen printing. I hope to continue to explore using color to show transparency in design, as shown in my recent Watercolor Quilt series.
Amy Friend
When I was a little girl, my mother taught me to sew. She sewed clothing, including our Halloween costumes and holiday dresses, but she wasn’t a quilter. It wasn’t until I became a mother and was spending more time at home with the kids, that I found modern quilting blogs and they got me interested! I was never all that drawn to traditional quilts but I did appreciate their history. I just didn’t feel a pull to make them. When I discovered modern quilting, probably in about 2008, I thought that I would like to try. I already knew how to sew and owned a sewing machine, so I taught myself from online tutorials. Quickly, I discovered paper piecing and fell in love with it. I then began designing my own foundation paper pieced patterns and started my blog, During Quiet Time, in 2009. This blog evolved into my business, a second career that I am pursuing while home with my kids. Prior to working as an author and designer, I was a museum collections curator. I am the kind of person who prefers not to sit still and relax. I like to be busy creating things all the time. I think it is this need to create that fuels me! I find that I get inspired in moments of quiet, often when I am out for my morning walk. A thought will come to me and I will want to sketch it out and get started! Nature also inspires me routinely. I have many quilts that were inspired by leaves or flowers. I don’t have a favorite color but what I love about quilting is being able to use all the colors and not worrying if they work with my complexion. For example, I am blonde with fair skin and can’t wear chartreuse, but I love to sew with it! I rarely plan quilts to fit a particular bed size or color scheme of a room but rather create color palettes that I feel drawn to and want to work with. I love all shades of white, melon, yellowish greens, mustard, gray, and pink. My least favorite colors are red and orange. I appreciate all the modern quilting design elements but I would say that I particularly like incorporating some negative space or alternate gridwork. And I love the asymmetry and sense of the unexpected that is produced through improv. However, I love the technique of paper piecing. The combination of improv and paper piecing led me to write my second book, called Improv Paper Piecing: A Modern Approach to Quilt Design.
Please follow my quilting journey at www.duringquiettime.com or on Instagram at @duringquiettime. I have authored three books, Intentional Piecing, and Petal + Stem, plus Improv Paper Piecing mentioned above. My particular passion is paper piecing combined with modern quilt design.
Heather Black
I think I was always a quilters but just didn’t know it. When I was a baby I had a quilted baby blanket that I stole from my older sister, consequently I started calling my blanket “mine.” I always felt connected to quilts and attempted to make a couple quilts in college but with little to no instruction I ended up creating something unrecognizable as a quilt. In 2011 my friend asked me if I’d take up quilting with her and I instantly said yes but this time I wanted to do quilting my way. I’d taken sewing in junior high and knew how to use a sewing machine so I set out designing a quilt that would look good in my house, which has more of a modern laid back feel. The further I got the more I enjoyed the process of making a quilting that was entirely me. By the end of it I had a queen sized, hand quilted, quilt that I used on my bed. After making my first “real” quilt I got serious about learning how to properly make a quilt and learned mostly from the Internet. The more quilts I designed the more quilts I wanted to make. I’d found a true creative outlet and haven’t stopped quilting since.
Modern Quilt Designer, Maker & Pattern Writer Modern Quilts and Quilt Patterns Quilt Inspiration and Blog by Heather Black – Quiltachusetts www.quiltachusetts.com |
Tara Glastonbury
I learnt to quilt by taking a traditional sampler class in the late 1990s, but it was meeting a group of like-minded textile artists and discovering the modern quilt movement that really set me on my way to designing quilts of my own.
My quilts are graphic and geometric. I like to play with scale, asymmetry and bold colour. I tend not to follow trends in fabric or quilt design so much, instead preferring to work with recycled and second-hand textiles. I design quilt patterns as well as making quilts for exhibition.
My inspiration comes from other textile techniques and traditions, from attending Quiltcon – the quality of ideas I discover there is like nothing I see anywhere else – from the materials I work with and causes I’m passionate about.
Stitch and Yarn
ETSY PATTERN STORE
www.stitchandyarn.com
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