Quilts and friends meeting again

collaborations, Exhibits

I first met Giovanna @jonikquilts on the verge of new year 2020, thanks to the common interest for improv modern patchwork.

After noticing her on the web thanks to common attendance of an on-line workshops, where the sneak peeks of our works in progress suggested we had a similar taste for color choice, I decided to break the ice inviting Giovanna to start a joint project. During the first phone call, while Giovanna was on the mountain enjoying family holidays, I proposed her to meet in person. A new year was starting: the best moment to fill our agenda with new plans! Even if this required to take the train, Giovanna liked the idea of travelling, and started to fill her luggage.

In February 2020, Giovanna took the train from Mestre, near Venice, and reached me in Trieste. What was the content of her suitcase? A bundle of quilts! All the quilts she had sewn in the recent years. Large quilts, small quilts, mini quilts, top to be finished, flying thread…

Received in my home, the quilts popping out from Giovanna’s bag seemed to be endless. It was the first chance we had to see each other in person, and to look at all the quilting work done by both of us until that day. We started to plan a weekend in Prague together, to visit an international patchwork fair. We didn’t know that this one was the last occasion for us to meet, in years.

Until today.

Technology helped us to pass the difficult coming months: sometime crises create new opportunities. We met virtually, we tightened the connection with another Italian improv quilter, Carla Beretta @falcolupo, and ideas started to take shape: the construction of Quilt Improv Studio project.

Now, one of our old ideas took shape.

This Saturday we had the first occasion to meet physically again. It’s been a great experience to be in person, for the first time after almost two years, during the inauguration of the gallery The tales of the needle and the brush. A great occasion to meet quilters earlier known only through the web, and to appreciate the beautiful details of their quilts in a way that photography cannot express. Thanks Giovanna for passing through all plan changes we had in these complex times, and to continue with enthusiasm in promoting our initiatives together with Carla! Remote ways of working will remain our main tool: our quilting community reaches whatever distance.

On the back of this photo: the quilts Giovanna and myself made with identical palette, jointly purchased just in time before everything was closing down. Now they have finally been put one at the side of each other, in a real exhibit where we could be together.

Improvising with common colors

collaborations, Exhibits, improv process

When it was time for me to propose a palette for the month of October, I immediately thought of the pumpkin color and to the works I have done with orange fabric. I chose my quilt made for the first Quilt Improv Studio game, and I listed the colors used at that time to share its juicy palette: my favorite oranges, white and a well contrasting dark blue.

You can find the resulting fabric selection made in collaboration with Patchworkvictim, at the following page of their blog.

In this video you can see how nice prints using orange blue and white we could find, to match with the solids chosen at the start.

If you wish to see with your eyes the orange quilt which was created following this palette, you can soon come to visit the quilt+painting gallery The tales of the needle and the brush, opening on October 23rd in Trieste (Italy) and displaying not only orange quilts, but also blue quilts and black and white quilts, all stemming out from the fantasy of improv quilters who followed Quilt Improv Studio game prompts. And much more!

Participation to Quilts Unlimited

Exhibits

Two of my quilts are part of the juried show Quilts Unlimited, on display since Saturday, October 02, 2021 to Saturday, December 04, 2021 in Old Forge, New York.

The organizers made a great job in creating previews and event related material, collected in the online reception page. I can feel like being there, in good company of beautiful works from Australia to US, even if I’m not travelling there. My quilts travel more than me!

In this video you can find a selection of hanging quilts. It’s nice to see that my yellow “Grasshopper path” stands near to a blue quilt, getting contrasting colors effect in the sequence of the display, while my “Landing” mates with a quilt having similar repetitions and symmetry scheme. Thanks to View Center for Arts and Culture for this awesome exhibit!

On the making of an image

improv process

It was for several days, that a blue sky quilt idea was floating in my mind.
I resisted for all those days to the temptation to start it, because I was in the middle of other projects. A completely different color occupied my sewing table, the supersaturated red of my monochrome quilt, still to be finished.
I managed to work according to my real preference: one quilt at a time.

Then, my quilting table became free.
I started.
And I submerged for a full weekend on my new blue project, without breathing fresh air for hours.
It fullly captured me.
So strong was the effect of full immersion into a stage of new creation, that every other activity in the queue disappeared from my radar.
I even forgot for one full day to send the announcement of the new quilt+painting gallery that was in preparation here in my hometown!
(Well, the gallery announcement has just been launched – read here if you are in north east Italy, and you consider visiting this super special event soon!).

Blue and white fragments continued to get attached to one another on the design wall, when, suddenly, my composition was not working anymore.
Too big.
The clouds, inspired to the late summer sky visions stored in my mind, needed to become too large… maybe kilometers large… like in the real life.
Not working, not working image at all.

The splash on the design wall soon turned out too busy, giant and pixellated.
I remixed, I ripped sections, I abandoned the initial purpose… but there was no way out.
Until, like a casual gesture, I placed my jelly roll blue strips on the design wall. Strips in series, like a color check, like a grid.
And, surprise-surprise… I started to see my work clearly again.
Thanks to the presence of the grid, I suddenly understood what was happening to my work.

— Alert: engineer nerd content below —

I involuntarily created an “interference grid”.
Like the one I used during my optoelectronic engineering studies… when a laser beam passed through a filter, and became transformed into physically meaningful patterns…
This grid acted, indeed, as a filter.
It helped me to extract mosaic cell scale.
To separate portions of the mosaic having different appearances.
It distilled the randomness of my work into some sub-series having a meaning of their own.

Now, I have decided a possible way on: to use only some portions of my work, to simplify it.
The image should become more readable.
Or at least, the idea returned readable for my mind. I see again a number of possible paths for the progression of my work.

I don’t know if the above story is understandable or even interesting as a quiltmaking phase.
But for me it was important.
The rest, still needs to be written…

Patchwork and painting group gallery announcement

activism, Exhibits

I’m pleased to announce that a group gallery event is coming soon in Trieste (Italy), dedicated to the two techniques of patchwork and painting, at Atelier dell’arte in Raffineria street 4/c, opening on October 23rd until November 13th.

It is an occasion where multiple streams will be collected: stories of connections from a distance, in a period when people could not meet in person but still wanted to be creative together; the sense of a widening perspective that can be achieved on a canvas when a painter wants to feel in open air while being in stay-at-home mode; the solidarity that can be materialized thanks to the effort of tens of quilters, such as the sewing marathon resulting in a donation to GOAP rescue centre preventing violence against women.

In this venue we had the opportunity to host some examples of the works realized during the challenges launched by Quilt Improv Studio. It is the first opportunity to put together Quilt Improv Studio games participants from the surrounding of the venue site in Trieste, wishing that this be repeated also in the future with a wider participation and related logistics arrangements!

All these happenings will be presented in the gallery “The tales of the needle and the brush”: flyer here below!