Ps and Qs, Part 1

After the lecture at the Virginia Quilt Museum by Dawn Flores about The Forest Project, the museum brought in box lunches for everyone and then we reconvened in an upstairs exhibit space for the Ps and Qs exhibit curated by Jill Jensen.  Jill led us around the exhibit telling us about the P (Printing) aspects of the different pieces in the exhibit. The Q stands for Quilting.

Jill is part of a group called “Fiber Transformed” which was recently highlighted in the most current edition (April/May 2017) of Quilting Arts Magazine starting on page 30.  A wood block print carver, she made this large block,

which was printed with black oil based ink on white fabric and then painted in with the blue water based textile paint for the water and boats.  She had to pay special attention when carving that the left and right sides of her block would be continuous ends for her prints.  The pieces were all printed prior to painting in the color and sewing so that the seam allowance would not interfere with the print process by creating a raised lip.

Continuing on around the room, she had two other pieces in the exhibit, the farm field scene which was also printed from one solid wood block;

and the baby Christening dress which was too old and fragile to salvage as a textile; so she painted it to make it stiff, rolled paint on the dress itself with a roller and then made a mono-print of the dress onto a piece of fabric which had been eco-dyed with both “Silver Dollar” and “Baby Blue” eucalyptus leaves.  She has used prints made from the dress in several other pieces of work but this was the only one in this exhibit. 

Work from 4 other artists in the exhibit will be shared in tomorrow's post.  The Fiber Transformed group is made up of  6 fiber artists living and working in Virginia and includes Jill Jensen, Mary Beth Bellah  (founder of the group), Jill Kerttula, Lorie McCown, Lotta Helleberg, and Wrenn Solcum.