Posts Tagged ‘quilter’
Patchwork Quilting Star Mary Helen Fernandez Stewart!
I would like to take the time this evening to introduce to you a true star in the world of patchwork quilting; Mary Helen Fernandez Stewart. I have known Mary Helen more years than I care to think about. So far back that I cannot remember if I first met her at QSDS (Quilt Surface Design Symposium) or as members of the exclusive Art Quilt Network, way back when it was still Nancy Crow’s group. The when and where is not important, it is the why.
For some reason Mary Helen, Susan Shie and myself, along with our spouses just all hit it off something BIG and our friendships were easy and simple, and long standing. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with Mary Helen in years but this week she joined Facebook, and reading her blog it was like the years simply melted away. We are in different times of our lives than the last time we met but, like good friends, it didn’t matter, and we could take up simply where we left off!
For those of you that are not yet familiar with Mary Helen you really need to read up on her and her work! The pictures I have included here are of her work, Merinda’s Creation Quilt, is currently hanging in the FAVA Show in Oberlin Ohio that we “visited” earlier this week in this blog. Measuring 39″ x 61″ it is a wonderful work; with layer upon layer of stitching, piecing,
and embellishments, that invites the viewer to return over and over again to see what they may have missed the last time! All of Mary Helen’s work is done like this, with airbrushing, sketching, etc. incorporated as the piece calls for it… and you are NEVER disappointed! No wonder she has been invited to have a one woman showing at the Works Gallery! Read the rest of this entry »
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Patchwork Quilting; Goddess of Democracy Quilt
Hello! I am so glad to see you again!
Like I told you before, I am going to jump all over in this patchwork quilting blog, and until I know what YOU are looking for especially! I have lots of subject matter accumulated over my 30+ years! My thought is as we start a dialog we will naturally progress in the direction you want. In the meantime I push my red hat to the back of my head, stretch out my fingers, and follow my own path…
Last night we talked a little bit about political quilts… have YOU ever made one? What was it like and what prompted you to do that?
My one real political quilt was of the “Goddess of Democracy”, the statue of liberty looking statue that was temporarily erected in Tiananmen Square in the 1989 uprising. It is a very large quilt and she was airbrushed onto the surface of the quilt so that she appeared to fade… since she didn’t survive. She was bound in representative barbed wire that was done with embellishment threads around her torso.
I think she meant so much to me and I made the quilt because Read the rest of this entry »
Patchwork Quilting; How DID I Get HERE?How Did YOU Get to be a QUILTER?
Why did I become a patchwork quilting professional? And more importantly how did I get from there to here?
I guess I could say my journey started in 1979 with my first quilting class. But that really isn’t true. My first experience with fabric and needle dates more than a decade farther back, to when I was ten years old…
I came home from school one afternoon to the pronouncement that my mom had signed me up for LESSONS! ”Lessons!” I cried, as I pirouetted around the livng room. Now you have to understand, we were a blue collar, middle class, family of six. No one ever got lessons for anything. It was the old adage in action “if you can’t do for all, then you don’t do for any”. So lessons were a very big deal! So piroetting was certainly called for! After all… I had wanted to take dancing lessons for as long as I could remember!
Well imagine my surprise… and notice there is not an exclamation point after it… when my mom announced that I had the wonderful opportunity to take… drum roll please… sewing lessons. Read the rest of this entry »
