art quilt

At the beginning of this month, I enrolled in a quilting class at De draad van Ariadne.
The workshops are organised at the house of Dorien.  We used to live in the same street, many many suns ago.  We even went to the same school, and she will always be that girl to my mind/eyes - no matter how grey our hairs are now.  So, she hasn't changed a bit, and when we met, it immediately 'clicked' like in the old days.

3 afternoons of quilt making.  Starting with a drawing, collecting ideas, fabrics, slowly forming.  No ordinary quilt, like the beautiful throws you think of.  No.  Art quilt.  It means you can throw in anything, fibers, pictures, embroidery, any stuff.  That's easy.  Yeah, right.  Not to my mind.

the others were wonderful !

Great combination !

The difficulty in this proces is the 'letting go'.  There is no limit to what you can do, except the limits and bounderies of what you learned before.  So it took me a while to feel comfortable with this.  And if you can do anything, it is restrictive too.  The liberty can block the creative process.
I'm used to following a pattern, an outline - created by somebody else. I guess I'm a copy cat at heart.  When I see a beautiful pattern, I want to copy it.   I always add something of my own, and very often change things along the way. But start from scratch ?  Brrr....


Dorien wanted me to make something. Create ! And I'm telling you, that isn't easy. So I had come up with a basic idea.

Living in a seaside village, I wanted the quilt to reflect that.  It had to be about sea and beach.  a sunset perhaps, since that has nice colours ?
Then I remembered an evening my son and I had a stroll along the sea, we took some pictures and jumped over little waves.  He lost his mobile phone that evening, it must have fallen out of his pocket.  The sea ate it.  It is probably floating towards England now...  big crisis, I remember him being very upset about this. So maybe I could encorporate this into the quilt.

Arno at the sea

Ok.  The ideas were there.  I arranged fabrics and threads on the canvas.  I embroidered and stitched some with the machine.  Added stuff I had made on other workhops. And when I got in the flow, It was real fun and time flew by.

arranging and changing

I am now the proud owner of a hand made art quilt.  It is hanging on my wall.  And you now what ?  My son immediately recognized what it was about !

can you see the sun, the waves, and the mobile phone ?  tihihi...

Some leftover from another workshop finally found its place

silver threads arranged to symbolize the waves

Dorien has a special talent.  Her house, the workshop area and everything she showed us has a waw-effect.  She has won prizes with her wonderful art.  She is a very patient, sweet and lovely teacher - I'm going back there next year.  Can't wait !