Textures connect with Nature

collaborations, improv process, joining events

During March 2023 I had the opportunity to present my talk “From the microscope to the sky” to SAQA Texas, in a zoom gathering moderated by Susie Monday, Texas Regional Representative of Studio Art Quilt Associates. Susie, together with me, will be part of the Color in context: Red SAQA global exhibition. 

I explained how I am inspired by textures that I find in nature and during my professional experience.

I have used photography for twenty years, and among my past photo galleries there was one fully dedicated to textures visible in the reflections on the surface of water.

I started to use microscopy during my thesis work at the University, and the pictures I gathered in that period became part of a science communication project which travelled around Italy for some years.

I am still using microscopy and other imaging techniques, such as optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray tomography and ultrasonic testing: I have a professional relationship with images and I continuously work extracting technical meaning from raw abstract pictures.

When I put my recent texture quilts aside to the images obtained at the microscope, sometimes I find they have similarities. I don’t use photos as a direct source to make a quilt as a replica of the subject, but the library of pictures filling my memory surely influence my quilting practice.

Ally Ryde described my works as “quilts of places”. My last quilts are a collection of landscape textures, such as: Grasshopper path, Sealights, The space between the clouds and River gone green.

After many quilts dedicated to exploring this subject, I have the feeling that textures spontaneously speak of Nature. Since ancient times, our brain needed to recognize the variation of a popping fruit among the dense foliage; to spot the movement of creatures approaching through the thickness of the grass.

We are specialized in looking at textures.
And this experience is a continuous pleasure.

Names for a texture

improv process, joining events

I like to explore the terms to be adopted when describing textures, the ones obtained by patchwork piecing. I’m tempted to borrow words that I use when I describe materials observed at the microscope.
A random texture could be an “isotropic” pattern. This means that you can see similar shapes, whatever direction you look them from. To make some examples: a bubble foam may be isotropic; a wood plate resulting from a longitudinal cut is not isotropic, being oriented in the branch growth direction.

I will talk about this in my next zoom video lecture, on Thursday September 24th at 17.30 CEST (Italian language), thanks to local quilt shop hosting the event. A good occasion to discuss on the fact that, even if improv piecing seems chaotic, there is still some reasoning behind!
For attendance, you can subscribe to Patchworkvictim mailing list, and you will receive free invitation link!

Overall video series can be found at this link.

Birmingham shows quilts live

Exhibits, joining events

Last year I was planning a travel to Birmingham with my family, with the Festival of Quilts as one of the destinations. Some friends listened to our discussion and said: “Why not? Let’s go to London all together, and you Paola shall be our guide for English translation!”

At that time, we postponed the plan to year 2020. But we’ve not purchased any ticket to Birmingham yet: the holidays were adjusted to visiting the mountain in our surroundings, in order to remain within our region.

Still, my opportunity to join the Birmingham event arrived anyway: the Festival of Quilts went “live”!

Today I’ve attended the virtual inauguration, and the emotion was there when the moderator announced: “The winner is…”. And this happened for no less than 15 times: so many, indeed, were the categories of the virtual competition, and I could appreciate the view of very elegant winning quilts, including striking works from kids down to 5-9 years old category!

I participated to the event with one of my works too. My quilt “Seaside” is now visible in the on-line gallery of the Festival of Quilts virtual competition, category contemporary quilts: I decided to propose my entry to the contest, by submitting one of the rare cases where I used raw edge applique.

“Seaside” is dedicated to the colors and ripples of Adriatic sea, wetting my home town Trieste. Shells, sand and sunlight reflections on wave crests appear as symbols on this work. The longitudinal development of the layout allowed me to play with the band line direction: I quilted three long stripes with walking-foot, that can be read either as waves, or as an abstract shape placed at the panel core.

A quilt by Giovanna Nicolai is on display too, in the modern category of the Festival of Quilts 2020 gallery. I love this work of her, titled “Fluorescent hope”: it’s featured also on the home page of the site hosting our joint project Quilt Improv Studio, that we share with Carla Beretta. Giovanna wrote in her article, themed on the recent expansion of digital quilt world: “We will participate to inauguration ceremonies staying at home”: I’ve experienced this right now, together with hundreds of quilters connected at the same time to the Festival opening ceremony, during my lunch break, with a tasty dish of spaghetti and meat sauce!  

Participation to course “Wedge curve improv”

joining events

Quilting community gathering around the two-day livestream interactive workshop with Sherri Lynn Wood, “Wedge Curve Improv“, seems to have been an event. Thanks to Arapahoe County Quilters, who opened virtual enrollment to this course (initially planned for their guild in Colorado), I had the opportunity to join, together with quilting friends in Italy, and others from many countries, including Australia, where the course started at 2.00 a.m.!