Painted Quilts

One of my concerns at the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show was how some quilter's tried to make their quilts look like paintings. I was googling to find links to the Gee's Bend Quilt show and found this blog - outofthebasement. Kay seemed to share some of the same concerns.

I tend to not like quilts that seem to be about mimicking painting. Some go so far as to be landscapes or portraits. Some of the landscapes don't look too bad - but I haven't seen a portrait that I like. One thing that I esp. don't like is when people cut out fish images from fabric to be "fish" in their quilts. I prefer the fabric and it's pattern to be considered an abstract element.

There were some cases where fabric was painted various colors in a washy way - and that was ok.

A couple of my favorite quilts were Peggy Brown's Art Quilts. They seemed to be mostly ignored by the quilt enthusiasts - but I could see them being popular at art fairs or galleries. From her web site I can see that her watercolor and her quilts are of a similar, abstract style.

This quilt, Winter Water, was one that was at the Quilt Show. Her description laid out how she adhered white interfacing and tissue paper to cotton with acrylic emulsion and painted it with watercolors. (I think the colors in this digital image is more intense that in real life). It had quite an icey feel to it.