Quilting is the term given to the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. An array of stitches is passed through all layers of the fabric to create a three dimensional padded surface. The three layers are typically referred to as the top fabric or quilt top, batting or insulating material and the backing.
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 together, or patchwork. The pattern and color of these pieces creates the design.
Ai Kijima, born in 1970 in Tokyo, Japan, is a contemporary artist residing in New York City. She is noted for her use of traditional quilting techniques to create colorful fabric collages from found materials such as bed sheets, vintage kimono, t-shirts, curtains, and dishtowels.
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. This art is generally either wall hung or mounted as sculpture, though exceptions exist.
The quilts of Gee's Bend are quilts created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama along the Alabama River. The quilts of Gee's Bend are among the most important African-American visual and cultural contributions to the history of art within the United States. Arlonzia Pettway, Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph are among some of the most notable quilters from Gee's Bend. Many of the residents in the community can trace their ancestry back to enslaved people from the Pettway Plantation. Arlonzia Pettway can recall her grandmother's stories of her ancestors, specifically of Dinah Miller, who was brought to the United States by slave ship in 1859.
The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles is an art museum in Downtown San Jose, California, USA. Founded in 1977, the museum is the first in the United States devoted solely to quilts and textiles as an art form. Holdings include a permanent collection of over 1,000 quilts, garments and ethnic textiles, emphasizing artists of the 20th- and 21st-century, and a research library with over 500 books concerning the history and techniques of the craft.
Sue Reno is a fiber artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Michael Francis James is an American artist, educator, author, and lecturer. He is best known as a leader of the art quilt movement that began in the 1970s. He currently lives and maintains a studio in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Khayamiya is a type of decorative appliqué textile historically used to decorate tents across the Middle East. They are now primarily made in Cairo, Egypt, along what is known as the Street of the Tentmakers centered in the Qasaba of Radwan Bey, a historic covered market built in the 17th century. The street is located immediately south of Bab Zuweila, and is located along the historic economic axis of Cairo.
Michael Cummings is an American artist and quilter who lives in Harlem, New York.
Radka Donnell, was a feminist, painter, art therapist, poet, translator, storyteller, and pioneer of modern quilt-making. She explored what quilts can mean and look like, as distinct from traditional quilting and the fine arts culture.
Linda MacDonald (born 1946, is a multimedia artist who was at the forefront of the studio quilt art movements. She has been called a "fine artist [who works] with quilting techniques."
Yvonne Porcella was an American art quilter.
Malcolm Armstrong Harrison was a New Zealand clothing designer and textile artist.
Therese May is an American artist who was an early participants in the art quilt movement that began in the 1960s. She is known for her mixed media quilts and is featured in several contemporary quilting histories.
Martha Neill Upton was a watercolorist, sculptor and studio quilt artist. Her quilted tapestries helped quilts become seen as fine art, rather than craft work, during the early 1970s. Her quilts were shown in the first major museum exhibition of non-traditional quilts, The New American Quilt at New York's Museum of Arts and Design, then called the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in 1976.
Sandra Sider is an American quilt artist, author, and curator. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, specializing in Renaissance studies. She also holds an M.A. in art history from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
Yvonne Wells is an African-American folk artist and quilter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is best known for her self-taught style and her story quilts depicting scenes from the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the International Quilt Museum.
Joan Schulze is an American artist, lecturer, and poet. Schulze's career spans over five decades: she is best known for her work of contemporary quilts, fiberarts, and collage. Schulze has been named a “pioneer of the art quilt movement,” and her influence has been compared to that of Robert Rauschenberg’s. Her work is in galleries and private collections worldwide including the Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, & the Oakland Museum of California.
