Quilting Arts TV

Are you familiar with Quilting Arts TV? As a long-time subscriber to Quilting Arts magazine and owners of many DVDs on various quilting and surface design techniques, we're happy to report that it is now possible, depending on where you live, to view current episodes on public broadcasting television. If you cannot find it showing in your area, you can also subscribe to the online version, or choose to purchase a particular series that you may be interested in.  Which brings us to the most recent series, season 2900.  The shows are hosted by Susan Brubaker Knapp, and she is joined by Vivika Hansen DeNegre to share artwork from the Quilting Arts community. 

Series 2900 includes segments with 11 quilt artists including Lea McComas, Margaret Abramshe, Luana Rubin, and Denise Labadie with topics ranging from color to surface design to applique. A unique feature in this season appears at the end of every episode, called Finishing Touches.  Here Susan and Vivika chat about several pieces from the Quilting Arts community that were submitted to the magazine's Readers Challenges.  

Sue has participated many times in the challenges and has had several pieces selected to be published.  In early 2022, past participants were invited to submit to a special challenge just for those whose work was previously published, and the selected pieces are the ones featured in Finishing Touches.  

Sue was delighted to see her piece "Serendipity" featured at the end of episodes 4 and 11, and to hear the comments and discussion between Susan and Vivika regarding her quilt.  

This piece evolved from an "ugly" hand-dye that was overdyed in indigo and became the result you see here, thus the title "Serendipity". The official description of the process is as follows:

Indigo fixes everything!  This quilt started with a rather ugly hand dyed fabric that looked like a brown and white spotted cow.  Last summer my friend and I had an indigo pot going so I decided to overdye it in hopes of improving it.  After accordion folding and clamping plexiglass circles on the outside, it went in the pot.  The outside layers directly under the circles came out great, but the middle was still uninteresting.  So, I cut off strips of the circles, refolded the rest and dipped it in the indigo pot again.  Voila!  Now it looked like art.  I added an original design Thermofax spiral print on the brown circles and echoed the circles across the center, doing all the quilting with hand stitch.  

The photos above show the original ugly fabric, results after 1 dip in the indigo pot, and final configuration after a second dip in the indigo.  It was a great exercise in creativity and "going with the flow" of unpredictable results.  

Above is a detail shot of the finished piece.

If you're not yet or haven't recently been a watcher of Quilting Arts TV, please check it out.  There are so many interesting techniques featured and so much to learn from the Quilting Arts community!