Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts

Friday, April 3, 2026

Some reading and viewing links for the long weekend


QuiltCon 2026 award winners

QuiltCon is the largest modern quilting event in the world, presented by the Modern Quilt Guild. It is a quilt event full of quilters, makers, artists, vendors … from all around the world!

QuiltCon features a vibrant quilt show full of competition quilts, community outreach quilts, and special exhibits as well as an enticing vendor hall, with all booths curated with the modern quilter in mind. 


Handmade quilts bring comfort to palliative care patients

Kaye-Maree Hinton's husband Garry was in end-of-life care with a rare type of brain cancer, when a nurse laid a bright, handmade quilt over his hospital bed.

Ms Hinton, 62, says the simple act of kindness provided a spark of colour and comfort in the stark and sterile hospital environment.

"The fact that somebody cared and thought about him," she said.

"It was so comforting … to cover him with something so beautiful, instead of just hospital sheets and hospital blankets in cold, stark white."  Emma Siossian, ABC Mid North Coast, 22 February 2026


3D Landscape Embroidery Captures Colorful Aerial Views of Rural England

…Inspired by aerial views, textile artist Victoria Rose Richards creates colorful, 3D embroiderydesigns based on the rural landscape of her hometown of Plymouth, England. Each highly-detailed piece looks like a textile snapshot taken from the sky … Emma Taggart, My Modern Met, 17 October 2020


In my experience as a textile artist and educator, imperfection is not a flaw in creative work. It is an essential ingredient. It is where movement appears, where decisions become visible, and where the hand leaves a trace that no machine or formula can replicate. Imperfection is not the opposite of skill. It is the evidence of presence … Carolina Oneto, Modern Quilting Blog, 17 February 2026


Many quilters learn technique. Far fewer learn how to critique quilts.

Yet the ability to analyze and articulate what we see is essential for artistic growth. Whether you are attending QuiltCon, visiting a local guild show, or reviewing your own work on the design wall, developing skills in art critique for quilters transforms instinctive reactions into informed evaluation … Carolina Oneto, Modern Quilting Blog, 24 March 2026


Why value contrast matters in quilting

What is most important in quilting? Is it the design, the fabrics, straight/curved/matching seams? Or is it most important that one’s quilt looks unique – or just like the model in the pattern?

All of the above may be important to you, but when you get the basics right in quilt construction, one more thing is key. It is important to have proper value contrast in your quilt Tilkunviilaaja blog, 1 February 2026


Color Theory and Quilt Background Color Selection

In many traditional quilt designs built from repeated blocks, a motif naturally reads as the foreground, while a single—often neutral—fabric functions as the background or negative space. While this convention doesn’t apply to all of my work as a modern, improvisational quilter, there are times when a clear relationship between foreground and background emerges. That’s the case with this quilt in progress. As I pieced these motifs together, I had a fairly clear vision: I imagined them set against a neutral grey background. From years of hands-on experience and study of color theory, I know that a mid-toned grey can support colorful motifs without competing with them. Unlike white, which can wash colors out, or black, which can create high contrast and visual drama, a mid-tone grey tends to allow colors to relate to one another more naturally. … Claudia Shearer Quilts Blog, 6 February 2026

Sunday, December 28, 2025

Summer reading, viewing, puzzle links





Textile Talk: Victoria Findlay Wolfe interviewed by Teresa Duryea Wong

Victoria Findlay Wolfe talked to Teresa Duryea Wong about Victoria’s new book, “The Quilting Experience: A Celebration of Community and Patchwork,” and exhibition, “Option Expedition.” …  Quilt Alliance, 14  May 2025


The Quilt Show: online Puzzles!

Summer entertainment for quilters.

A long list of online jigsaw puzzles of quilts - no table space taken up, no pieces to lose, or to pack up!

And a long luster of memory matching puzzles, where each ‘card’ is a quilt block. 



One Hundred Stitches, One Hundred Villages: The Beauty of Patchwork from Rural China
In rural Chinese villages today, women are creating dynamic patchwork textiles, as their mothers and grandmothers did before them … Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
Exhibition book:
Chinese Patchwork: Ancient Origins, New Expressions

Nancy Berliner with photographs by Lois Conner, MFA Boston  
ISBN: 978-0-87846-907-9



Sensing Place – Student Exhibition 2025: Outer Sensing, Inner Seeing
The artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham believed that her perception of nature involved ‘outer sensing and inner seeing’. This is a way of observing the outside world that involves using all of the senses, assimilating the information in the mind, and then evoking a response using imaginative creativity.

For this exhibition, each of you has taken a walk in your environment and has sensed, selected, and documented what the writer Steven Feld described as your ‘tingling resonances and bodily reverberations’. In the brief, I asked that the response to your observations should express the essence of your experience and should involve a joyful and playful use of colour, texture, and materials. I encouraged you to use your imagination and creativity to develop something unique and extraordinary … Fibre Arts Take Two, December 2025

The Fibre Arts Take Two home page also includes links to past student exhibitions, and  Friday Fibre Artists podcasts.


Friday, October 3, 2025

A little online reading, listening, viewing

We have a long weekend here in NSW on the first weekend in October -more time for quilting perhaps, or watching the NRL Grand Final, adjusting to the start of daylight saving, enjoy the beautiful spring weather … or to catch up on some listening, viewing or reading about quilts and quilting. Here are a few links to get started:


A film about men quilting in a Missouri prison has 'overwhelmed' the system with donations

A Netflix documentary about men quilting in a Missouri prison has prompted an outpouring of fabric and yarn donations, to the point that the state Department of Corrections is asking people to slow down and think about giving money instead … Torryionna Miller, Columbia Missourian, 11 June 2025
If you haven’t seen it yet ‘The Quilters’ is streaming on Netflix in Australia.
The Quilter on Fire podcast 4 December 2024. 1 hr 52m

Reviving Rocking Stitch and Saving Wholecloth Quilting
Hand quilting in a frame is being placed on the Red List of Endangered Crafts by the Heritage Crafts Council as the number of elderly practitioners of this skill, mainly in Wales, Northern England and the Scottish Borders continues to dwindle and quilting frames disappear.

But here we talk to two quilters who are seeking to reverse that by recognising, protecting, and reviving whole cloth quilting, and the tools needed to carry it out
Haptic and Hue podcast, 3 July 2025



The Witches of Scotland: How a New Tartan Became a Living Memorial
… The Witches of Scotland Tartan sold out long before it went into production after its registration was spotted by an eagle-eyed American, testament to the fact that the tragedy of the witchcraft trials spread to America with the colonists of the 1600s. It also speaks volumes for the power of textiles that the two determined women, who have been campaigning for a pardon for all those accused of witchcraft in Scotland, have chosen a fabric that can be worn by all as a living memorial to those who lost their lives, rather than a statue or a fixed monument …
Haptic and Hue podcast, 11 June 2025

 

Quilt Conservation – National Quilt Museum

The National Quilt Museum’s Collection comprises nearly 700 quilts. In this video, Laura Hendrickson, Director of Collections and Registrar, illustrates how quilts are cared for at the museum. For more tips on quilt conservation, see the article below by Gerald E. Roy of the Pilgrim Roy Collection.


So, you've poured your heart and soul into piecing a beautiful quilt top. Congratulations! Now comes the exciting part – envisioning how it will look after being longarm quilted. As longarm quilters, we're just as excited as you are to bring your vision to life. However, sometimes, before we load your masterpiece onto our machines, we might spot a few little quirks in the piecing that are worth a quick chat about. Think of it as a pre-quilting pep talk to ensure the best possible outcome for your treasured project! …
Tracey Browning Constantin Quilts


Book Review: Improv Quilting by Irene Roderick

while quilting has long balanced on that fine line between tradition and innovation, Improv Quilting steps proudly into the realm of improvisation. These are quilts that are made without any specific intention, breaking the boundaries of tradition while allowing the freedom to explore and experiment.

For some, quilting is a world of carefully measured patterns, precise piecing and historical techniques, but here, it’s a playground of possibility and opportunity …
Cathy Jack Coupland, Stitch Safari, September 2025