My Blog

Pre-requisite to basic drawing

03/13/2012 12:48:00

Hi there,

There seriously will be video taped drawing and design courses as experienced in an accredited institution this year. For now, google Zentangle.com and bring up the copyright owners website for Zentangles. I recommend learning this very much for help with beginning drawing as doing it helps you to concentrate, focus and make your fingers more agile. It's also very addictive once learned. For $41, you can buy the beginner kit which is all you need. Expansions of the kit are free on other websites

Take out some time and study this a bit. You won"t be disappointed.

Sincerely

Lisa Quinn

President

Arashi Shibori

12/12/2011 15:45:00

It's been a while since the last posting but not for lack of things accomplished. We worked in Mixed Media, computer design for art quilts and accomplished ourselves in arashi shibori. Thanks to Anne Selby from Bath UK. Her supplies were invaluable. Her dvd was very detailed. However, a previous background in dyeing with knowledge of color theory is necessary to produce marketable products. We will be continuing with Shibori of many types designing all silk wardropes that make use of arashi shibori as well.

Well off to the wrapping pole

See you after the New Year for our first video You Tube on basics of art and design. Watch at your leisure.

Art Classes On Line at the NC Piedmont Art Quilt Guild

08/17/2011 14:50:00

After taking graphic design courses with art courses since 2007, I will be attending the Art University of San Francisco, CA. How, on line. You take pictures of your art work to complete assignments and they are digitally marked up by the Art Professors.

In January, I had changed to the Art Institute of Graphic Design from Charlotte to Pittsburgh and I've taken five courses already. I have one more to take and that completes my course work in graphic design.

I'm going to give myself a break but also update my portfolio to show to the Art University of San Francisco. I am very excited to be taking classes in Fine Art for a BFA in such a large cultural center.

As I wrote in my last blog, I will be airing art classes to better design and colorized or dye and paint your own quilted art work. There is nothing like this published.

I will see you January 2012 with my first class. I will archive all the classes, they will be free of charge, so no one is left out that wants this education.

Sincerely,

Lisa Quinn

Teaching Art for Quilting on video

07/26/2011 13:10:00

Our membership is small due to the fact that the guild is located in a farming community. Traditional quilting is a very favorite past time. I belonged to the Cabarrus County Quilt Guild while I was starting the NC Piedmont Art Quilt Guild. There was a very small group of women who met outside the guild to do their form of art quilting. Unfortunately, it was not art and convincing them to try out a legitimate art teaching guild was impossible. They knew nothing about art, never took an art course and by example did not make art. But they considered themselves to be the best of the best.

I've ran into this mentality in the Charlotte Quilt Guild which is much bigger.

Those that reached a little bit beyond mere patching and repetitive patterns thought they were better than the rest in the guild. They knew some magic!

However, their examples of art quilts were no more art than the ones at Cabarrus Guild.

Art is something you have to be taught and then practice at it. If you are genetically artistic, you are among a very very small percentage of people. You can rank yourself with DaVinci, Monet, Miro, Dali, to name a few renagade painters and teachers.

So it's safe to write 99.9% of us need education to produce art. But the time for it is rarely available. The venues are Art Institutes and universities with Art Departments. And to have an opportunity to get into one these institutions requires a High School diploma, a decent SAT score and an art portfolio full of examples of art you have been working on during your life.

Even if you have all of these requirements you have to take classes with kids that are younger than your own. From experience, I know that you can't get a good education because the young students disrupt the class room setting. They don't buy the books, do the homework, present art examples. They sit in their seats and text their friends. If the instructor asks a question, it goes unanswered. With the instructor's reputation on the line, he/she is forced to create a course that challenges no one. Consequentially, if you are there to learn you won't and your money will be wasted.

I finally put a stop to contributing to the money pit and found the Art Institute of Pittsburgh On Line Division. I must say it is very challenging. In five and one half weeks you go through a 13 week course. And not just the outline but the whole course with artwork done daily and homework assignments due daily.

It's difficult, and I don't like it. However, it is the only way I will get trained and exposed to legitimate art information.

After writing this large blog, there was an exterior motive. I would like to provide on line video training on art and design, paper and all the supplies, lesson plans to follow that have been reduced of the fat in art course and give the meat of the course. Three months of video training can provide all that you will be exposed to personally or on line at the institutions. Leaving you with practice time at your own pace. E-mail me at the sign up page on this website and tell me what you think of the opportunity. Since I have posted the website in one and half years, over 5,100 visitors have gone through the web pages. They are interest but geography is keeping us apart. And this can be overcome.

Sincerely,

Lisa Quinn, founder of the North Carolina Piedmont Art Quilt Guild.

Thanks

Write your post here.

Linda Matthews' embellishment classes

07/10/2011 06:33:00

In my favorite links page I have listed www.linda-matthews.com. Linda is a true fabric artist. Her embellishments are beautiful. She had several dvds on digital printing and titivations. Monday, July 11th, 2011, her new on line classes begin. I realize this blog entry should have been sooner, however,you can sign up for the 1st and/or 2nd class anytime and catch up with lifetime admission to each class. The classes are a bit expensive, but I promise you they are worth every dollar.

On her web site Linda also has free videos and downloads. On of her best dvds is on digital grounds for printing on fabric and one on how to make round cording. Now you may think what is so important about cording. When you watch the dvd and use the cording, like Linda, you will continue to add it as an embellishment on quite a number of projects.

Just a reminder on a favorite links website. Jeanette from Fabrics to dye for is dyeing and then painting with iridescent paint after dyeing. The end product is great. She has an art quilt gallery where she displays customers' quilts using her new dyed and painted fabric. Go to the Links page and click on her website and she how beautiful and texturized her fabrics are.

Linda Matthews and her new book

05/30/2011 10:18:00

Hi to all, I writing today to get the news out about Linda Matthews an artist and teacher of textile art. She has just published a book on her cording methods. Doesn't sound interesting, well you should she what wonderful art she creates and then binds it with a special cording method. The price is only $9.95 and she takes Paypal. Visit her site www.Linda-matthews.com It's on my favorite links page.

It's been very hot in North Carolina which is slowing the growth of shrubbery and vines. There is not much prune or cut back right now. So I'm designing a fractured landscape and working on my quilt with encaustic art.

Have a great June.

Lisa Quinn

New and upcoming art work

05/12/2011 13:45:00

I have uploaded a digital image of a finished quilt . I realize only half is shown. This was done so you could see the details. As I mentioned many months ago, I was going to show everyone how to create an art quilt utilizing encaustic art. There are three pieces of encaustic art in the gallery.

The theme for the quilt will be African and all of the material used was bought from Kenya. They make beautiful batiks.

So give us a few months to have it done. We are also doing an underwater sea scene and using Susan Carlson's method of quilting with scraps.

Sincerely,

Lisa Quinn

Art quilt techniques

05/05/2011 06:14:00

I believe in the last five years I have read at least 12 methods for making an art quilt. For instance, Cynthia England fractures her scenes into very small pieces then machine stitches them with a 1/4 " seam allowance. Her work is art and its beautiful. I had a brief moment when I thought I might use the method but it was just a fleeting thought. I am not a quilter who wants to work hard, just insightfully.

Mary PQ uses blown up photographs that are traced onto tracing paper then the pieces are cut out to make templates. Her landscape fracturing is a great technique.

Then there is the raw edge applique where you trace your picture of contour line drawing made from a blown up digital image, make templates then cut out the fabric without seam allowances. This is my choice. I don't want to use a mini iron and starch and iron all those seam allowances down.

When it comes to the process of making the quilt, I want the fastest method that does not sacrifice presentation. So when I read Susan Carlson's new book on mosaic pieces I was really inspired. You blow up a photo and trace its contour line drawing onto stabilizer using a window or light box to trace. You can pin it to a design wall and cut pieces of cloth and arrange and glue them to the stabilizer. When I mention pieces I mean very small pieces. The scissors becomes your main tool for free hand cutting of fabric pieces. After working several areas you become accustomed to the free form cutting without making pieces with straight edges. All are curve linear.

My project was an endangered species of sea turtle an element oceanic element to my under water scene. It gave many options for cutting patterning for the shell. Unlike Susan, I draw paper thumbnail sketches of designs I might use and repeat with the four or five tones of dyed fabrics or batiks. I choose the best design from the group that I have brain stormed and that becomes my group of templates for cutting the fabric.I maintained the pattern through out the turtle's shell then thread painted between the grouping of pattern designed fabrics. There is no tracing involved. I use the template for reminder of the patten and do not cut out the separate shapes. After a few applications of the pattern, your ability to size up the pieces of the template without tracing becomes very accurate,

When complete you have given you art work deep and texture and a beautiful arrangement of color.

Easy reference guide

04/14/2011 11:01:00

April 2011

I was able to move my art/sewing room to an area as big as a 2 1/2 car garage. I could not believe how many items I had once everything was laid out. I only slightly remember what some of items were purchased for. In addition, I re-stocked my book case separating the books from the Quilting Art, Quilter's Newletter, and the Joy of Quilting magazines. They all had pages with corners bent on them. This was to remind me that there was some new technique or good trick to utilize.

However, stacked again in my book case, they would be overlooked.

I decided to copy all the bent corner pages and put them in a 3 hole binder to keep at my main work station. Now I have only one easy to reach reference guide of art and quilting items.

What makes an art quilt art?

03/07/2011 14:03:00

Last month I commented on what the art world considerations were with regards to art quilts. "It is not art"!

How do you make your quilts artistic. First and foremost you need an education in art and design principles. Second, sketching and sketching scenes until finally you have created one that you like, that says something to the viewer, that evokes an emotion or responds to a condition and it follows art principles and color theory. The masters of art history gave to the world their insights into making art. These insights are the foundations of Art and Design courses.

Enlarging digital images and tracing them onto stabilizer and applying fabric with under wonder does not make it a piece of art. I've read where quilt guilds advertise that they engage in the art of quilting. Quilting was never an art. You can change the wording around all you want but the truth is that it is not art. With a photocopy or scanner you can not create art. You can copy and cover a digital image. That's it.

For quite some time, I've wanted to educate myself in art and design. So far, I've spent $30,000 on credited art classes over three years. I still do not have a style of art but that is my goal. If you want to judge whether or not a quilter is an artist look at their websites. Do you see a given style among their artwork. That is the first thing you will see with a textile artist, a "signature".And when you visit national quilt shows you can look at an art quilt and know who has made it without looking on the label sewn to the back.

Lisa Quinn