In this new showcase I’m featuring four Modern Quilters that you will love!
Trinidad Bascuñán
My name is Trinidad Bascuñán Oviedo and I am a Chilean textile artist. I studied Literature in Santiago de Chile and began to learn in parallel to loom weaving more than twenty years ago.
After several years of practice in the workshop of my tutor Pilar Valdés (@tallerpilarvaldes) as her assistant and apprentice, I did a postgraduate degree in upholstery at West Dean College (@westdeancollege) where I was able to immerse myself in a deeper practice, learn from the best and surround myself with a super stimulating environment in terms of disciplines, cultures, and techniques. That time in West Dean, and learning from Pat Taylor, made me go from practicing a textile technique to really understanding it as an artistic discipline, with its theoretical richness, mystery, and hard work as components of the search for my own language.
In my work, I have been developing a fondness for certain color palettes and shapes that are repeated, many ovals and saturated colors, which somehow generates a dialogue between the pieces. With the pandemic and the lockdown, I had to adjust the dimensions and explore other techniques (incorporating embroidery and cross stitch), which was a challenge but also a good school for patience and an inner gaze. I discovered colors and textures that I had not noticed and I played more than I expected. It was not that bad!
Janice Gunner
Stitching is a vital part of my life, whether by hand or machine, I always have a piece of work in progress, and my work is continually evolving. I was taught simple embroidery by my late mother (she passed away from Covid in 2020) when I was about 5 years of age, and I have stitched in some form ever since. I am a self-taught patch worker and quilter having got into the art/craft in 1974 because I had lots of left over fabric from dressmaking!
I am now an Art Quilter, working mostly with fabrics I have dyed myself using natural or synthetic colours. Occasionally I design and manipulated images I have taken and have these reproduced digitally to make whole cloth quilts. I also work with traditional African and Japanese fabrics.
Current themes are inspired by the Japanese tie dye techniques of Shibori, nature, architecture, and my travels. A recent critical illness and the sudden death of my beloved husband David has forced me to re-evaluate my practice. Recent work has dealt with my recovery from Bacterial Meningitis and Sepsis and the Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease my husband was diagnosed with before he passed away. The latter was the subject of work for made for the major project of the MA (with Merit) in Textiles I was awarded in 2020.
I have written two books; Shibori for Textile Artists for Batsford (in its fifth reprint) and Liberating Log Cabin (self-published) and contributed to other books, magazine and journal articles. I have taught patchwork and quilting for over 30 years, 25 of these as a City & Guilds (UK P&Q Qualification) tutor. During that time, I have introduced more than 1000 students to the craft/art. I am a former President of The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles.
I have been a judge or jury member for many quilt exhibitions or competitions including Quilt 2004 – 2007 (within The Knitting & Stitching Show), The Festival of Quilts (NEC Birmingham), Quilts in the Garden, Waterloo County Quilt Festival (Canada), the Royal Dublin Society show, Pacific International Quilt Festival, USA, and The Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival. I am an advisor to Immediate Media and help to facilitate exhibitions for them at The Festival of Quilts (including Shizuko Kuroha in 2018) and have exhibited my work nationally and internationally for many years. In 2019 I was the inaugural recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Festival of Quilts. I have also been awarded the Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship for International Quilt Teachers from Quilts Inc, The Amy Emms MBE Award for services to quilting by Quilts UK, The Quilters’ Guild Travel and Education Bursary for Quilt Teachers and two Medals for Excellence from City & Guilds as a student and a lecturer, In addition to nationally in the UK, I have taught in Abu Dhabi, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and USA and taught at The Festival of Quilts for many years. I now mostly teach and talk for quilt, embroidery and textiles groups and guilds all around the UK and since the pandemic, on Zoo, and for a selection of shops Cowslip Workshops in Cornwall.
I was married for 47 years, I have three adult sons, three grandsons and a granddaughter. My hobbies include travelling, photography, listening to music, reading, and visiting art galleries and museums.
Maria Zaidi
I’m Maria, a housewife, and mother of two teenage boys, who enjoys sipping tea while creating and making interesting things. From art journaling and slow stitching to baking, and from reading books to photographing our everyday life, I believe in a creatively productive life.
As a child, I developed my interest in embroidery and cross-stitch but never really pursued it as a hobby, until recently. I have started to enjoy the art of slow stitching after I started reading about it a few years ago. The concept sparked an interest in me to explore the medium of cloth and thread without the prerequisite of rules and perfection. I love the freedom that comes with arranging fabric pieces and stitching them together with a needle and thread. The look and feel of the stitches on fabric is kind of addictive for me I guess because that is what draws me in and compels me to create.
I usually keep my pieces small and manageable. I often get asked what I do with them to which I say that I simply make them for the sole purpose of just making them. I might eventually bring them together for a project someday but for now, I’m creating and keeping them as is. While at it, I don’t have a specific favorite color to work with but I’m drawn towards neutrals, pinks, and blues. I also like to draw and art journal which I share on my other Instagram account. If you are interested you can find it all at @marudles.
{“key”:”6″} 
Processed with VSCO with 6 preset
Barry Passchier
I’m Barry Passchier, a textile artist from the Netherlands. I have been attracted to textiles since I was a child and played with fabric scraps, while my mother was busy sewing clothes behind her machine. In school I had an interest in art and science and from that perspective I chose to study architecture at the Technical University of Delft. I worked at an architect’s office and had my own practice for about 15 years. But gradually, I found out that working as an architect did not fulfil my needs as creative person.
In 2013, two things happened that inspired me to start creating art with textiles. At one moment I promised my mother to clear out a large box of fabrics. It was filled with left-overs from the clothing she had sewn over the years. I took it home and instead of clearing it out I dived into it and remembered playing with fabrics as a child. A while later, my mother-in-law gave me a book by the British textile artist Janet Bolton and that inspired me to create textile pieces with the scraps I couldn’t throw away. To learn more I attended a couple of Janet’s workshops in the UK and was even more inspired by her teaching. I also learned a lot by taking other workshops from various (textile) artists. I think that attending workshops is a great way to find new skills, techniques and different ways of making art. And since there are so many workshops online there’s a whole world to discover.
The textile art I make doesn’t start with a design, but starts with a few pieces of fabric that catch my eye because I like the colours and textures together. Then I add other pieces of fabric, and step by step, I construct a piece of shapes and layers until I think I have something interesting to look at. This process can take quite some time and involves a lot of looking, searching and going through my fabrics. The images that appear have a strong link to daily life, with objects that I like and sometimes architectural elements. In my abstract pieces I explore how colour, shapes and lines speak to one and other.
find that making art is a wonderful journey that is encouraged by change. I do like to use specific colours and techniques, but my favourite colours change over time and probably will in the future. I’ve learned different techniques, like paper collage, that sometimes find a way in to my art. I’m glad that I found the opportunity to develop my creative side by making textile art.