Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

Today I am posting the quilts of Tricia Coulson.

Producing and creating art is an essential element in Tricia's life. She is a textile artist with a genuine love of her medium. You can visit her website here:

http://triciacoulson.com/

Bricollage 9

Tricia used to create rusted found object sculptures, so rusting fabric seemed like a natural progression. She went to her collection of rusty items and tried different combinations. When she hit on circles and triangles she was inspired to enter The Rust-Tex Collection.

Bricollage 9 Detail
Machine pieced, rust dyed cotton, over dyed rust dyed cotton, screen printed with textile paint, machine stitched with mono-filament, embellished with hand embroidery, rusty wire and washers.
Bricollage 10
Tricia has an interesting interview on Valley Fiber Life called Tricia Coulson and the Human Journey. Click here to read it.

Row Houses won Tricia the best use of beads or beaded elements

in the beaded category for Lark's Quilt It Contest.
She works full time creatively and exhibits her work across the US.

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

The Rust-Tex Collection had 112 quilts entered by 80 people from all over the world. Entries came from Australia, Israel, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Belgium. The majority were from the USA. The only International entry to be juried into the Rust-Tex Collection was "Rust Rest" by Els Vereycken of Belgium.

Rust Rest

During childhood Els watched as her mother made and designed, hats and clothes. Els always sewed, but mostly she collected pieces of fabric to use later on in some sort of combination. Her study of science, job and family left little time to work on all of her fantasies. As soon as she retired from teaching biology, she threw all of her energy into making art quilts.

Rust Rest Detail

Machine raw edge applique, rusted cotton fabric, commercial fabrics, free-motion machine quilting.

Els says, "Time flies so fast, I don’t have enough of it to fullfil all the dreams I have."
She shows her art quilts in national and international exhibitions.

I am so glad Els entered The Rust-Tex Collection!!!

She is a member of Q.Art.Belgium. Here is a link to their very cool site:

http://www.q-art.be/

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

Today I am posting about Jean Cheszek.

Jean been quilting for 6 years, but she has never made a traditional quilt.

She was inspired by her sister, who's work you can see here:

http://www.annschroederstudio.com/

Jean needed some artwork to fill up all the blank walls in her new house.

Moonstruck

Early on she discovered the joys of dyeing her own fabric. When she saw the Rust-Tex booth at a quilt show, she knew it would be something else she needed to try. With both hand dyeing and rust dyeing, Jean loves that the process can yield completely serendipitous results.

Moonstruck details

She does not have a blog or a website. However she does make quilts for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI). "Fading Memories" will be part of the March auctions. You can bid on it here:

http://www.alzquilts.org/quiltauction.html

Fading Memories

Here is Jean's artist statement for this piece: My parents both suffered from Alzheimer's. This quilt portrays them as young adults when they each served in the Navy in World War II. The fabric in the quilt is made from photos taken over the course of their lives -- representing all the memories that faded as Alzheimer's progressed. The back of the quilt shows the photo montage along with a more recent photo of my parents.

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

Today I am posting about Bonnie Ouellette, she has been quilting for about 10 years and doing abstract and art quilting for the last 3 years. She founded a small art quilt group in her area to bring together other quilters who were looking for a more forward approach and begin to design their own work.

Tiffany Turquoise Mine

Bonnie loves collecting found objects so rust dyeing was right up her alley. She particularly likes to walk along railroad tracks, where she usually finds some very interesting rusted material. Rust dyeing is accidental. After examining the fabric Bonnie hopes an idea will come to her. This particular piece screamed the veins of a mine. She dyed the original fabric and thought it was a poor example of dyeing with too much white and just a little turquoise color so she "over rust dyed" it. The fun part was when she decided to discharge the rusted fabric with rust remover. Unfortunately, this process is not very well controlled so she had some work to do to remedy that. The mine entrance is from old wood found along the tracks. The mine cart is made from rusted parts from an old toy train. Bonnie loved making her piece for the Rust-Tex Collection and will continue to experiment with rust dyeing. Tiffany Turquoise Mine detail

To see similar pieces of Bonnie's look at her 2009 journal quilt entries by clicking on the link below:

http://www.quiltart.com/triple_play/artists/5.html

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

Today's post is about Daryl Dunlap.

Daryl's quilt is the smallest one in the Rust-Tex Collection. At 8 1/2 x 11", Homestead, is one of her journal quilts.

Daryl has been quilting fewer than three years and art quilting for less than half of that time. Since she is a “young” quilter, she constantly tries new techniques to improve her skills and build up her knowledge bank. Daryl discovered a short article on rust dyeing in an older quilt magazine and has never looked back. Although she continues to try new techniques in both traditional piecing and art quilting, the rust dyeing technique continues to pull her in over and over again. Homestead

To date, all of her experiments and experience with rust dyeing have evolved from the whole cloth approach. She loves the randomness of wrapping odd sized pieces of fabric around even odder pieces of rusty whatever. Her approach is to then try to pull out an image from the resulting imprint and create a design around it.

Detail of Homestead

The judges felt her pieces looked like Oriental Art.

Rust dyed whole cloth quilt, machine applique house, free-motion machine quilting, binding is hand done using cotton embroidery thread.

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

Today I am posting Pat Dolan's entry.

Pat was a watercolorist for 20 years prior to switching to fiber art. She started making art quilts in the mid to late 1990's. She did her first rust-dyeing experiments in 2006 based on postings she saw on the quiltart list serve. Pat actually had to go out to BUY rusty stuff since she had recently moved from a large home into a small townhouse and all such items had been discarded!

Woodland Walk

Pat is very interested in paradox - the juxtaposition of opposites. John Hopper, who writes The Textile Blog, wrote a very thoughtfully article about Pat and her fascination with paradox. To read it, click here.

Pat's inspiration for Woodland Walk, came from the rusted fabric itself. She was inspired by the autumnal theme of drying leaves, decay, naked trees, fallen feathers and death...before life renews itself.

Woodland Walk Detail

Machine pieced, 100% cotton rust-dyed fabric, marbled paper, commercial fabrics, rubber stamped with Acrylic paint, colored with colored pencils, machine quilted with rayon threads, embellished with buttons, feathers, and metallic fibers.

Here is Pat's website:

http://pat-dolan.com
Here is her blog:
http://patsartjournal.blogspot.com

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

Today's post is all about Jane Ogren.

Her piece is an ode to her husband a retired Geometry teacher.

Rusted Geometry

She wrote that this quilt was inspired by a store in Pittsburgh, PA, called "Construction Junction", which collects and resells recycled materials. When she needs inspiration she browses through the store...this time a bucket of rusty nails caught her eye and intrigued her.

Jane is a native Pennsylvanian. She has lived the last forty years in the Pittsburgh area. Jane graduated from Edinboro University of PA with a B.S. in art education and an M.Ed from Indiana University of PA. She taught art in several suburban schools. Although retired from teaching Jane has stated, "A part of me feels alive when I work with young people and when I teach. And although teaching and stimulating other people's creativeness takes a tremendous amount of energy it is also very rewarding."

Rusted Geometry Detail

Whole-cloth quilt, cotton canvas, backed with felt, hand-quilted, rusted with old nails, embellished with those same nails and wire.

Jane enjoys the evolution of her work as she problem solves through the entire process deciding on color, texture and design.

Here is Jane's website:

http://www.janeogren.com/index.html

Be sure to look through the galleries. You will be glad you did!

Winners of the Rust-Tex Collection

The 24 winners for the Rust-Tex Collection have been selected!!!

My plan is to post one every day for 24 days. If you are a regular reader of this blog you know things don't always go according to my plans.

Today I am posting about BJ Reed.

Mum's the Word

Here is what she wrote me about this quilt:

Fall for me is the loveliest time of year, with mums making the last show of color before winding into the bleaker winter. Large flower heads in rusts, yellow, white, and rose make a lovely mix. This year I wanted to bring that show indoors!

You can read more by following this link:

http://www.piecemaking.com/quilt_mumstheword1.shtml

Ms Reed's focus as an artist has been on creating contemporary art quilts, often with a nature theme to reflect her love of gardening and abstracts to showcase various surface design techniques. Besides art quilts, she also creates machine home embroidery designs, quilt patterns, hand dyed fabric and hand-crafted rice paper flowers.

I love this quote from her home page of her Bunch of Bloomers home page, "To breathe life into each fiber embodies part of my soul. -BJ Reed"

Detail of Mum's the Word

Machine pieced, rust dyed cotton, overlaid with Chrysanthemum bloom transfers, Inko dye transfers, machine embroidery, hand dyed fabric, stenciled lettering, patinated copper leaf and two leaf transfers, free motion machine quilting with echo hand stitching.

Festival of Broken Needles

February 8 in Japan women celebrate Hari-kuyo: Festival of Broken Needles by burying broken or bent needles in tofu or soft jelly cakes to follow this 400-year-old Japanese tradition. You can read more about on Debbie Bates' blog:

http://stitchtress.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/hari-kuyo/