Based in Reston, VA, she draws inspiration for her contemporary wall quilts from the view of nature outside her window. This inspiration is quite literal. “Pebbles on the path or currents in water might become part of the texture I stitch into each piece,” she writes. “Color combinations in bird feathers or flowering plants might slip into the palette I use to start my next design.”

Textile art also comes quite naturally to Grisdela, as she comes from a long line of women who have expressed themselves using a needle and thread (although, curiously, she notes that there were no quilters in her family). “Creating with various forms of fabric and thread has been a part of my life since I was a child,” she says, adding that she taught herself the ins and outs of the trade through trial and error.

Grisdela’s quilts are showcased and sold in fine art and fine craft shows nationwide and can be found in private collections all over the country.  She also teaches classes and workshops and is the author of Artful Improv: Explore Color Recipes, Building Blocks & Free Motion Quilting, published by C&T Publishing in November 2016. But you can also follow her work online, via Instagram:

The post This Quilt Maker Is Inspired by the View Outside Her Window appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I began quilting late 2013 when working for a fabric manufacturer,” she recalled in an interview with Brown Paper Bag. “I’d done many digital quilt designs there and understood the basic steps and terminology, and I thought that was enough to start on a project on my own. I dove right into a king-sized quilt using that experience.”

According to Marañon, the toughest step was the math she had to figure out to get the design to fit together. “Weeks later I completed assembling the top of the quilt, but to this day it remains unquilted, mostly because of its massive size,” she notes. “I’ve since learned that my preference is with smaller scales, and on pieces that are improvised rather than designed and calculated.”

Letting one step dictate the next, her approach to quilt making is now intuitive and imbues each piece with spontaneity. Her creations explore abstract landscapes, geometry, and repetition, highlighting details that would otherwise be considered flaws. Her personalized pieces emphasize, therefore, the hand of the artist, the result being quilts with uneven seams, raw edges and exposed thread ends. Inadvertently, these marks become the signifiers of reactionary behaviors and moods specific to each piece and its materials.

All of her quilts are designed and made by hand from her studio in Los Angeles using vintage and dead-stock fabrics whose histories are vivified with every limited item made. “I love exploring all sorts of possible outcomes by simply playing around with color, fabric, print, and texture,” says Marañon. “I am inspired most when I’m working, and ideas come in a frenzied rush and I just have to try new ways to lay out shapes, or new ways to mix mediums. Experimentation and fun definitely fuel my quilted projects, and that has to be the reason I’ve fallen in love with it.”

The post The Improvisational Quilts of Lorena Marañon appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her fascination with color sparked at a young age, and she remembers sorting her colored pencils into pleasing sequences as a child. After a degree in communications design and a career as a graphic designer, Kingswell discovered her second love, that of textiles.

Combining both passions for color and textile, she now creates quilt-like textile art which reminds of stained glass. Her work is characterized by vibrant colors and strong, geometric shapes through which she seeks a colorful physical expression of mathematical ideas. “I want my work to lift spirits and make people smile!” she writes, “And also intrigue them a little!”

Using mainly solid color fabrics in bright and saturated hues, her patchwork is very precisely sewn and contains no embellishments (“it has to be that way so there is no distraction from the colors and sequences,” explains Kingswell). Depending on the work, she sometimes stretches the finished design over a canvas stretcher. Other pieces are left flexible.

What emerges often appears random, but is actually very far from random. “I get pleasure from creating things – things that are so much more than the sum of their parts – finding new patterns by exploring the beauty of color, number, sequence, and proportion through the medium of fabric,” writes Kingswell. “Starting with a harmonious color-scheme, sometimes inspired by a poem or other text, or a special number, I impose a mathematical sequence, cut, rearrange according to the sequence, and see what happens.”

Take a look at her delightful results:

The post Creating Drama with Color: Alexandra Kingswell’s Textile Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Based in Reston, VA, she draws inspiration for her contemporary wall quilts from the view of nature outside her window. This inspiration is quite literal. “Pebbles on the path or currents in water might become part of the texture I stitch into each piece,” she writes. “Color combinations in bird feathers or flowering plants might slip into the palette I use to start my next design.”

Textile art also comes quite naturally to Grisdela, as she comes from a long line of women who have expressed themselves using a needle and thread (although, curiously, she notes that there were no quilters in her family). “Creating with various forms of fabric and thread has been a part of my life since I was a child,” she says, adding that she taught herself the ins and outs of the trade through trial and error.

Grisdela’s quilts are showcased and sold in fine art and fine craft shows nationwide and can be found in private collections all over the country.  She also teaches classes and workshops and is the author of Artful Improv: Explore Color Recipes, Building Blocks & Free Motion Quilting, published by C&T Publishing in November 2016. But you can also follow her work online, via Instagram:

The post This Quilt Maker Is Inspired by the View Outside Her Window appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I began quilting late 2013 when working for a fabric manufacturer,” she recalled in an interview with Brown Paper Bag. “I’d done many digital quilt designs there and understood the basic steps and terminology, and I thought that was enough to start on a project on my own. I dove right into a king-sized quilt using that experience.”

According to Marañon, the toughest step was the math she had to figure out to get the design to fit together. “Weeks later I completed assembling the top of the quilt, but to this day it remains unquilted, mostly because of its massive size,” she notes. “I’ve since learned that my preference is with smaller scales, and on pieces that are improvised rather than designed and calculated.”

Letting one step dictate the next, her approach to quilt making is now intuitive and imbues each piece with spontaneity. Her creations explore abstract landscapes, geometry, and repetition, highlighting details that would otherwise be considered flaws. Her personalized pieces emphasize, therefore, the hand of the artist, the result being quilts with uneven seams, raw edges and exposed thread ends. Inadvertently, these marks become the signifiers of reactionary behaviors and moods specific to each piece and its materials.

All of her quilts are designed and made by hand from her studio in Los Angeles using vintage and dead-stock fabrics whose histories are vivified with every limited item made. “I love exploring all sorts of possible outcomes by simply playing around with color, fabric, print, and texture,” says Marañon. “I am inspired most when I’m working, and ideas come in a frenzied rush and I just have to try new ways to lay out shapes, or new ways to mix mediums. Experimentation and fun definitely fuel my quilted projects, and that has to be the reason I’ve fallen in love with it.”

The post The Improvisational Quilts of Lorena Marañon appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her fascination with color sparked at a young age, and she remembers sorting her colored pencils into pleasing sequences as a child. After a degree in communications design and a career as a graphic designer, Kingswell discovered her second love, that of textiles.

Combining both passions for color and textile, she now creates quilt-like textile art which reminds of stained glass. Her work is characterized by vibrant colors and strong, geometric shapes through which she seeks a colorful physical expression of mathematical ideas. “I want my work to lift spirits and make people smile!” she writes, “And also intrigue them a little!”

Using mainly solid color fabrics in bright and saturated hues, her patchwork is very precisely sewn and contains no embellishments (“it has to be that way so there is no distraction from the colors and sequences,” explains Kingswell). Depending on the work, she sometimes stretches the finished design over a canvas stretcher. Other pieces are left flexible.

What emerges often appears random, but is actually very far from random. “I get pleasure from creating things – things that are so much more than the sum of their parts – finding new patterns by exploring the beauty of color, number, sequence, and proportion through the medium of fabric,” writes Kingswell. “Starting with a harmonious color-scheme, sometimes inspired by a poem or other text, or a special number, I impose a mathematical sequence, cut, rearrange according to the sequence, and see what happens.”

Take a look at her delightful results:

The post Creating Drama with Color: Alexandra Kingswell’s Textile Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.