Daily Blog

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You can find evidence of quilting everywhere, not sure if you'd call this Star Wars Sashiko, but the influence is evident. This was found at a Pottery Barn Kids store a number of years ago.

You can learn more about Sashiko in Show 2610 with Anna Bates.

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Jenny Haynes' Cones Quilt was quite a challenge when it came to piecing the large cone-shaped curves. We think she completed the challenge with exceptional skill.

Cones Quilt was featured as a MQG Quilt of the Month, sponsored by the Modern Quilt Guild, at QuiltCon 2020.

Photos by Mary Kay Davis

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Alex begins the Sew Along teaching you how to make the House Quilt Block and the Snowball Quilt Block. You can just learn the techniques, or you can sew along and have a quilted wall hanging when you are finished.

If you want the PDF pattern, you can buy it and instantly download it here:

Alex will be LIVE on Monday May 4 at 10am PST, 1pm EST, and 6pm London Time. It's more fun LIVE, but all lessons are recorded for playback.

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Baker Beach is based off of a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge taken by Valley Springs photographer John Slot. Sandra writes, “I hand-dyed most of the fabric – it’s all cotton – to try to look like the water, and the sky, and the rocks and the reflections,” she said. “It took about three months to make the piece, and then I quilted it. It won Best Pictorial at the Pacific International Quilt Festival last October (2019).”

Watch Sandra in Show 2609.

Original Photo from Sandra Mollon's Website ; Detail Photos by Kristin Goedert

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And Then Three Come Along At Once by Stephanie Crawford

When it comes to creating the illusion of space on a flat two-dimensional surface such as a quilt, the use of imaginary (or real) lines to create perspective trick the viewer into thinking that there is actual three-dimensional depth. Subjects appear less flat when you give them perspective. Last week we shared five of the six key ways an artist can create space on a two-dimensional surface. This week we will focus on the sixth element, perspective.

One Point Perspective:

Think of it this way. If it's large, it's closer. If it is small, it's further away.

Let's use the drawing of a road leading out of town as an example. If you look closely, you will see a horizontal line that is in the center of the drawing. This line represents the horizon. The trees sit at the base of the horizon line, while the clouds hover above.

The road is drawn using two lines that meet at one point along the horizon line. The lines of the street are drawn at an angle to create the illusion of distance and depth. Notice how both the road, and buildings along it, seem to disappear into the horizon. At the point where everything seems to disappear is called the vanishing point.

Now look at the buildings along the road. In real life, the buildings would all be about the same size. But, in a drawing, the buildings along the road need to be smaller to give the impression that they are further away.

Two Point Perspective:

In two-point perspective there are two vanishing points. Think of standing at the intersection of a city road.  

The building closest to you is the largest, while those on either side seem to vanish in two different directions.
 

Now that you have seen the graphic illustrations, let's look at examples in actual quilts:

One-Point Perspective

 
Amsterdam Alley: The Shortcut Between by Leslie T. Jenison (Left) ; Ciudad Fantasma by by Cecilia Koppmann (Right)

Pathway To A Secret Garden by Dianne Firth (Left) ; Piece and Quiet by Cynthia England (Right)

 
Space Refugee by Betty Busby (Left) ; The Street Of Golden Leaves by Keiko Kimura (Right)

 
Circle Line Art School

Two-Point Perspective

Hadley House by Sara Sherwin Roberts (Left) ; Rose Seidler by Gloria Loughman (Right)

 
Alleyway by M. Bunte

Circle Line Art School

Perspective in Quilts

by Allie Aller (Show 1906)
All images by Allie Aller unless otherwise noted

Landscape quilts that employ the basic concepts of perspective have richness and believability. We are drawn into the scene to our visual delight. 

What is perspective? It can be defined as the rendering of three dimensional space on a two dimensional page (or in our case, the flat surface of a quilt.)

What are the basic concepts of perspective and how can we use them?

The first is depth. We want to see into a landscape. To "fool the eye" into perceiving elements in our landscape as being nearer to us or farther away, thus providing depth, there are some basic tricks we can employ.

In the examples below, four tricks are used:

1) Objects in the foreground are heavier and more detailed. The orange autumn tree closest to us has thicker lines than the yellow trees in the middle ground. The hills in the background are made with thinner and thinner lines. This simple trick gives the illusion of distance.

2) Faraway objects get paler in color. In this first quilt, the hills in the background become a paler and paler purple, the farther away they are.

3) The same objects, farther away, are smaller. In the Lake Michigan scene below, the trees to the right of the picture, which are farther away, are rendered as shorter, but we "know" they are really the same size as the trees in the foreground. This concept is called "diminution".

4) The foreground shows lots of detail and texture; the farther into the background we go, we see less detail. Notice in this second picture that there is a lot of grassy detail in the foreground; then there is less in the middle ground, and none at all in the background.

The second basic concept of perspective is convergence. Vertical lines that are parallel in real life appear to get smaller and closer together as they recede into the background. That is because they are all aimed at the vanishing point, that imaginary point at which parallel lines receding from an observer seem to converge in the distance to a common point on the eye level or horizon line. (More on the Horizon Line in a moment.)

In the two pieces below, the fence lines illustrate this concept. In reality those fence posts are all the same size and spaced equally apart, but in perspective, they get smaller and closer together, the farther into the background they recede.  This doesn't have to be perfectly accurate, just believable.

Besides the fence posts suggesting perspective, in this second felted and embroidered piece, even the little French knot flowers are larger and farther apart in the foreground, and tinier and closer together in the background. Both these tricks work together to create the illusion of depth.

The little house in the quilt detail below also just hints at perspective, the way the roof line and ground line, though parallel in real life, convey two converging lines, aimed toward the vanishing point on the horizon.

This leads us to the third basic concept in perspective, the horizon line. It is the actual height of the viewer’s eyes when looking at an object, interior scene, or an exterior scene. That eye level height determines how the viewer will see the scene. 

From an aerial view, or bird's eye view, we are looking down on a scene, and the horizon line is very low. The eye level view shows an image or scene just as we would look straight out at it from a standing position, so the horizon line will be somewhere in the middle of the picture. From the worm's eye view we are looking up at our scene, so the horizon line will be very high.

So if we have an eye level view and are looking directly at a house, it will look like this, as in this embroidered printed photograph:

The horizon line, though we don't see it, is right about level with the steps of the porch, with its vanishing point right under the door.  But look!  Notice the shadow in grass in the lower left corner. That is actually a trodden path leading to the front door, and can you see how its lines converge towards the vanishing point? Even this subtle convergence gives depth and perspective to our scene.

Let's review these two basic rules for using perspective in quilting to gain depth in a scene:

1) Make the objects in your foreground with bigger heavier lines, more detailed shapes, and richer in color and texture than objects in the background. (This is why I always make my landscape skies very, very flat. I personally don't want texture in my sky because it brings it too much to the foreground, and really, what could be further away than the sky?)

2) Determine which view you want to show your quilt's picture from: aerial, eye level, or worm's eye.  That will help you find your horizon line and vanishing point, where all lines in your scene converge.

Homework:

Look at several photographs of buildings or simple scenes, and determine where the horizon line and vanishing point is in each one. See how lines in the image--roof lines, window casements, etc, angle towards that vanishing point.

Then as you go about your day, occasionally frame a scene with your hands and try and determine the horizon line and vanishing point in the view you are seeing. The series of photos below are an example of an aerial view with a low horizon line, looking down my driveway.

If you start thinking and seeing this way, it will come out in the quilts you make as well.

Copyright 2017 All quilts by Allie Aller

Work Exercise: The Vanishing Point Road

by Kathy Barbro

Here’s a simple landscape tutorial that illustrates how to draw perspective with a vanishing point. The drawings help show how much space can be implied in your art just by paying attention to lines and scale. And by keeping elements like the trees all the same type, it’s easy to see how they get smaller and smaller, the further away they get from you.

MATERIALS
• Drawing paper
• Fine tipped black marker such as Sharpie
• Crayons or colored pencils

View and download the landscape tutorial here.

DIRECTIONS
1. Lightly draw a center guideline on the drawing paper with a pencil.
2. Follow the Landscape Tutorial for drawing the landscape.
3. Trace the drawing with a black marker.
4. Color the landscape with crayons. Try using dramatic colors, as in a black road and colored mountains.

Click here for more topics related to The Art of Quilt Design program.

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We continue our feature on quilts from the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) exhibit, Layered & Stitched: Fifty Years of Innovation, as featured at the Texas Quilt Museum. The exhibit is described as:

Studio Art Quilt Associates presents Layered & Stitched: Fifty Years of Innovation at the Texas Quilt Museum in Galleries I and III. These studio art quilts, dating from 1968 to 2016, represent the extraordinary range of talented artists working in contemporary quilt art. Featuring a balance of abstract and representational styles, Layered & Stitched includes several foreign artists, with a wide geographic distribution of makers in general. The curatorial vision of this exhibition embraces diversity and excellence, including three-dimensional works. Juried by Nancy Bavor, Director of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles; Martha Sielman, Executive Director of SAQA; and Dr. Sandra Sider, Curator of the Texas Quilt Museum, who says, "Jurying this spectacular exhibition was one of the highlights of my career! It is an amazing show of historic significance."

The exhibit has also been collected in a companion book as well, titled Art Quilts Unfolding: 50 Years of Innovation by Nancy Bavor, Lisa Ellis, Martha Sielman, and edited by Sandra Sider. The book is described as:

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We love how much fun Annie H. Hudnet had creating her improv quilt, Jazz Riffs. A pianist and former dancer, she combined her two loves into this playful quilt.

Jazz Riffs by Annie H. Hudnut was featured in the Improvisation category, sponsored by Gotham Quilts, at QuiltCon 2020.

Photos by Mary Kay Davis

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We continue our selection of quilts exhibited in 2019 at the Houston International Quilt Festival as part of their 45th Anniversary, the Sapphire Anniversary. The Sapphire Celebration exhibit is described as:

"Quilters have long used the color blue to symbolize trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. Sapphire is also the chosen gem to celebrate 45th anniversaries—which International Quilt Festival is doing this year (2019)! These new and antique blue and white quilts will be suspended from the ceiling in a spectacular and unforgettable display."

To be a part of the exhibit, quilts had to fit the following criteria:

• Entries may be Traditional, Modern or Art.
• Entries must have been made between 1974 and 2019.
• The minimum size is 50” x 50”

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Daisy P. Aschehoug wasn't inspired by her quilt design until she began rearranging and repeating the main motif. She then called upon her other passions of curved piecing, a sense of order in composition, and color to pull the quilt together. 

Daisy's quilt, Columns and Vines won Third Place, Negative Space, sponsored by Coats & Clark, at QuiltCon 2020.

Photos by Mary Kay Davis

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Subject: Successful fabric combinations. This is for all quilters but is made as a help as a Pre-class for the Sew Along, Sequoia Sampler, starting Monday May 4. Alex is LIVE Friday at 10am PST, 1pm EST, and 6pm London time.

Buy the Instant PDF Download Sequoia pattern here