Four-in-Art Quilt Group

When I was in Long Beach at the quilt show, I fell in love with the Twelve-by-Twelve art quilts that graced one area of the exhibit hall.  I wrote about them *here,* and wondered on my blog if anyone wanted to join me in a new group?  Three other quilters did, and we came up with a name and a logo.  Four-in-art, a play on “foreign” and the four of us, was dreamed up by Betty, and we were launched.  Some of the Twelve’s work is below:

While Betty doesn’t have a blog or a Flickr page, the other two do.  They are Leanne of SheCanQuilt and Rachel of The Life of Riley.  We set up some rules, using a lot of the guidelines from Twelve by Twelve: roughly two months in between quilts with an extra month over the holidays, size about 12″ by 12,” any medium is okay but it has to be a “quilt” with a front, middle, back.  All kinds of techniques are encouraged and are possible.

For me, it was a bit scary.  My father and my sister Christine are artists, both with dedicated studios.  My father does painting, and my sister does that as well as mixed media.  But all of my family exhibits creativity in one way or another, from the way they arrange their desk (really, it’s quite artful) to their gardens to the choice of art that is hung on their walls.  But I’ve always been a quilter/photographer and only occasionally, a digital artist.  So to jump into the idea of making art quilts, well, really I just swallowed hard and did it.

The four of us chatted via email and Flickr and came up with a theme for the first series: Nature.  And then Rachel selected our first art quilt theme of Queen Anne’s lace, a flower that can grow wild.

That last photo is from Leanne’s garden, the first is from some random grab off of Google Images.  It’s helpful to think about the meaning of the flower as well, trying to draw out ideas, so we have posted ideas and insights on our Flickr.

One of the artists in Twelve by Twelve confesses that she loves commercially printed fabrics and while she’ll make some changes here and there, it’s always her starting point.  Since I’ve never taken a dying class or tried it myself (although in the Hippie-Dippy 1970s, I once tie-dyed everything in my camp suitcase while up at a church girls camp), so I knew I’d be starting with commercially available fabrics, too.

Our first reveal date is coming up on November 1st.  Check back then for my art quilt, but for now, here’s a sneak peak:

Here’s another version of our logo: