Art Quilting
 

What are some of the techniques you use in your Art Quilts?

fusing, embellishing, beading, collage, ...list goes on & on.....were you looking for some sort of specific information?
check out ThreadArts magazine for information/inspiration...check their links, resources for more places to look...

Are Crazy Quilts considered Art Quilts? Applique, counted cross stitch on that wash away stuff, embroidery, silk ribbon embroidery, ruching, beading, ribbon work. I use all kinds of buttons, trims, ribbons, lace, cigarette silks, and crocheted doilies.

All of the above. Carol Ann Waugh's Stitch and Slash and Stupendous Stitching methods. You can add paint to the fabric. Metal chains and rings; plastic (shower curtain rings, bottle tops, etc.) Paper (old book pages). Really, anything that hits my mind at the time to get across what I want to "say" in a piece.

You can also create absolutely awe inspiring art quilts using nothing more than piecing and quilting. It's the design of both those simple techniques that makes them art, no embellishment necessary.

If you are looking for inspiration, check out fibermania. Melody Johnson does great art quilts. She uses a lot of wonder under (light weight) in her projects.

What "art quilt" means is obviously open to interpretation. I think of true art quilting to be having a vision and going for it, with or without pattern, or instructions. Usually there will be a definite technique (like making an image by thread only-- there have been lots of pets done this way, and pictures of a woman presented more than once here on QB), or it can be totally fabric, but done as a landscape or an abstract, or ......? with or without embellishments.

There is an art quilt thread going on now, and I followed it for a while, but I'm not "into" embellishments or dark concepts (dark gray quilts depress me) and I was hoping they might start having specific technique, or concept threads, but that became a controversary. I'd like to see a thread that is basically "landscape", and another basically "portraits" (people, and animals), but I can't start it because I can't upload onto QB.


PatriceJ has put pictures up into categories and there are about 30 photos of quilts that QB members themselves consider to be "art quilts". They are a wonderful example of what I was trying to say above. Made from the heart, not just from a pattern.