Narrative Quiltmaking Studio - Points of Inspiration
Next month, Narrative Quiltmaking Studio begins at the Delaplaine Arts Center! This four-week class will include writing exercises and textile technique prompts and guide students on a journey of creating their own original quilt top based on a story of personal significance. We will be meeting in a cozy, well-lit studio space on the second floor of the arts center - it feels like the kind of place that magic will happen!!
The class builds on several sources of quilty wisdom, including Heidi Parkes's prompt-based quilt alongs and courses that focus on detailed techniques. I've always been amazed at how following Heidi's prompts brings out some of my most meaningful and favorite pieces that I've made! One example is her Love Letter Quilt Top - I enjoyed this process so much, I made three versions! Here is one:
Love Letter to Motherhood, 2023
This quilt is block-based, which is one approach you can take to crafting your quilt tops. Techniques include applique (including trapunto), embroidery, couching, and hand piecing, all of which we will cover in class.
Another approach is to make a wholecloth quilt, which means exactly what it sounds like: creating a quilt from a whole piece of cloth, not by piecing a bunch of fabric pieces together. One of my favorite quilts I’ve made to date is also from a Heidi Parkes class, Story Quilt Top: A Daily Practice in Hand Stitching, and is similarly prompt-based, intended as a practice to stitch one thing per day for a month. I was way too excited to wait the whole month, and did a bunch all in a row :) Here is my Story Quilt Top:
My Quilting Journey, 2024
All of the parts of this quilt are appliqued on top of a single piece of cloth, and techniques include hand applique, fusible applique, embroidery, Sashiko stitching and yoyos. Each part of the quilt represents a different point along my quilting journey, from inspiring people and techniques to my favorite tools to a tally of the number of quilts I had made at the time (the little x’s at lower left!)
In addition to Heidi’s teachings, Narrative Quiltmaking Studio will also draw on many lessons learned from Zak Foster. Zak is a proponent of writing as a way of getting to the heart of what you want to create, and I will share examples from Zak’s book, The World Needs Your Next Quilt, in class.
In 2024, Zak convened a year-long exploration called Destroy this Quilt on The Quilty Nook - I joined about halfway through the year, and caught up on the prompts very quickly! Zak’s prompts invited us to explore all sorts of unconventional techniques for quiltmaking, including making and mending holes in the quilt, incorporating words and writing, and finding some way to dye or otherwise discolor the quilt top. I didn’t have a specific theme at the outset of my first iteration of the process; over time it became a quilt all about the elements (earth, wind, water, fire), and my experience of and with them.
Destroy This Quilt, 2024
Again, I enjoyed the process so much, that I went through every single prompt a second time, and made a very different piece with a much more focused color palette:
SPLAT, 2025
More details about SPLAT here
Narrative Quiltmaking Studio will draw on all these points of inspiration, and will also include examples and discussion of historical and contemporary quilts in a range of narrative styles. It is important to me to share all that I know and have learned, and also bring in other voices and artists to enrich and deepen our perspectives.
One of my favorite parts about teaching creative quilting workshops and classes is the unknown: not knowing what types of themes, ideas, stories, forms, shapes, colors and creations will emerge from our time together. This class has the potential to take each of us on a journey to discover stories we want to tell, perhaps in a literal sense but quite possibly in abstracted and secret ways. I can’t wait to see what we create.