Patchwork or "pieced work" is a form of needlework that involves sewing together pieces of fabric into a larger design. The larger design is usually based on repeating patterns built up with different fabric shapes. These shapes are carefully measured and cut, basic geometric shapes making them easy to piece together.
A quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of two or more layers of fabric or fiber. Commonly three layers are used with a filler material. These layers traditionally include a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding, and a woven back combined using the techniques of quilting. This is the process of sewing on the face of the fabric, and not just the edges, to combine the three layers together to reinforce the material. Stitching patterns can be a decorative element. A single piece of fabric can be used for the top of a quilt, but in many cases the top is created from smaller fabric pieces joined, or patchwork. The pattern and color of these pieces creates the design. Quilts may contain valuable historical information about their creators, "visualizing particular segments of history in tangible, textured ways".
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era. Before the invention of spinning yarn or weaving fabric, archaeologists believe Stone Age people across Europe and Asia sewed fur and leather clothing using bone, antler or ivory sewing-needles and "thread" made of various animal body parts including sinew, catgut, and veins.
Fiber art refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as part of the works' significance, and prioritizes aesthetic value over utility.
Frank Havrah "Kaffe" Fassett, MBE is an American-born, British-based artist who is best known for his colourful designs in the decorative arts—needlepoint, patchwork, knitting, painting and ceramics. While still a child, Fassett renamed himself after an Egyptian boy character from the book Boy of the Pyramid by Ruth Fosdick Jones. His name rhymes with 'safe asset'.
Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum was an American cross-stitch embroidery designer known especially for her Victorian angel designs. Her designs were published under the business name Told in a Garden, with product divisions of Told in a Garden, Lavender and Lace, and Butternut Road.
Erica Wilson was an English-born American embroidery designer based in New York, known particularly for needlepoint. She also designed wallcoverings and greeting cards. Her designs were published by Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Wilson earned the nicknames "Julia Child of embroidery" and "America's first lady of stitchery" for her work.
The history of quilting, the stitching together of layers of padding and fabric, may date back as far as 3400 BCE. For much of its history, quilting was primarily a practical technique to provide physical protection and insulation. However, decorative elements were often also present, and many quilts are now primarily art pieces.
Marie Daugherty Webster was a quilt designer, quilt producer, and businesswoman, as well as a lecturer and author of Quilts, Their Story, and How to Make Them (1915), the first American book about the history of quilting, reprinted many times since. She also ran the Practical Patchwork Company, a quilt pattern-making business from her home in Wabash, Indiana, for more than thirty years. Webster's appliquéd quilts influenced modern quilting designs of the early twentieth century. Her quilts have been featured in museums and gallery exhibition in the United States and Japan. The Indianapolis Museum of Art holds the largest collection of her quilts in the United States. Webster was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 1991. The Marie Webster House, her former residence in Marion, Indiana, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993, and serves as the present-day home of the Quilters Hall of Fame.
Quilt art, sometimes known as art quilting, mixed media art quilts or fiber art quilts, is an art form that uses both modern and traditional quilting techniques to create art objects. Practitioners of quilt art create it based on their experiences, imagery, and ideas, rather than traditional patterns. Quilt art generally has more in common with the fine arts than it does with traditional quilting. Quilt art is typically hung or mounted.
Ideas from mathematics have been used as inspiration for fiber arts including quilt making, knitting, cross-stitch, crochet, embroidery and weaving. A wide range of mathematical concepts have been used as inspiration including topology, graph theory, number theory and algebra. Some techniques such as counted-thread embroidery are naturally geometrical; other kinds of textile provide a ready means for the colorful physical expression of mathematical concepts.
Holice Edward Turnbow is an American quilter, artist, and textile consultant. Since the early 1970s, Turnbow has curated, judged, and lectured at a multitude of quilting events throughout the United States and Canada. He is certified by the National Quilting Association as a judge and teacher. In 1988, he co-founded the Hoffman Challenge, a national quilting, clothing, and dolls contest featuring hundreds of participants. His design have been commissioned by Spartex, Inc., Stencil House, and Benartex, Inc.
Katherine Westphal was an American textile designer and fiber artist who helped to establish quilting as a fine art form.
Sophie Tatum LaCroix was an American handcrafts designer, editor and author of 18 books on crochet, tatting, beadwork, quilting, needlework and embroidery in the early 1900s.
Charles Counts (1934–2000) was an American potter, designer, textile artist, quilter, teacher, writer, and activist. Counts worked to preserve the art forms of his native Appalachia, and later moved to Nigeria where he taught until his death.
Martha Cole is a Canadian artist. She is known for her work with textiles, landscape, and artist's books, addressing themes of inter-contentedness, sustainability, and protection of ecological diversity. She currently resides in Disley, Saskatchewan. Cole's high school art teacher, Helmut Becker encouraged her to pursue a career in art. She was an instructor in the Extension Division, Fine Arts and Humanities, University of Regina.
The Sujani embroidery work of Bihar, is a textile expressive art product, given protection under the GI registration act. It is usually a quilt or bed spread, which was earlier made of old clothes, but is now generally made of easily available fabric with embroidery done with the most simple stitches with motifs narrating stories. It is exclusively made by women in 15 villages of Bhusra in the Gaighat block of Muzaffarpur and a few villages of Madhubani in the Indian state of Bihar.
Susan McCord was an American quilter. She is best known for her innovative designs and exquisite craftsmanship. Thirteen of McCord's quilts are included in the permanent collection of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Geraldine Elizabeth Kahle Beyer is an American quilt designer, quilter, author, teacher and lecturer. Considered by the quilting industry and the publishing media to be of the first designers to form a fabric collection suited to the needs of quilters, she began her career in India after she had run out of yarn. Beyer's works have won awards in the print media, and she has written about the history of quilting and her techniques. She has designed collections for fabric companies, and has taught and lectured on the subject domestically and internationally. Beyer was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame in 1984.
Lucinda Toomer was an American artist who worked in the African-American tradition of quiltmaking. Her quilts are known for their bold compositions, visual rhythm, and improvisational style. They were at the forefront of a surge of national recognition for the art form during the 1990s.
