 "Forget everything you know about quilting" That was the opening statement by presenter Ann Hornbeck at her recent Minerva Historical Society workshop on creating quilted wall art. Surrounded by her beautiful creations and a small group of participants, Ann shared her beginnings, process, and inspiration. Ann began her quilting journey in the traditional way of piecing and blocking together blanket quilts and similar decorative pieces. She joined a quilter's guild and learned all she could from the experienced quilters she worked with. One day Ann opened a book with images of quilts that more or less stopped her needle so to speak. The works of art that she found in those pages showed her that quilting does not have to be squares or rigid patterns. She started thinking about how she could recreate the images in nature that were a part of her world. Scenes from the pond in her backyard, snow on the evergreens, wild thyme growing in her field. For Ann, it isn't simply about the look of the piece. It's about the texture, the movement and the emotion the piece evokes from the viewer. She loves the freedom she has working with quilting in this manner. "The fabric is my paint" she says as she talks about her work. When Ann adds a rock to her pieces, the viewer sees and feels that rock. The purple materials that she uses to represent wild thyme put you in your car, driving down the road admiring the thyme growing along the roadside. When you work with fabric in this way, she says, the seams don't have to line up, raw edges are fine, they add texture and you can free sew the quilting in any pattern you want. In traditional quilting, you start with the cover. The entire cover is cut and blocked and sewn together and then you add the batting and backing. That process is reversed in Ann's process. She starts with the batting, which must be high quality and thin, and uses that as her canvas, She has a large design board on an easel on which she places her fabric pieces which is reminiscent of old style felt storyboards. She doesn't lay the pieces out flat like a traditional quilter would because she says "you can't view the entire piece that way, you don't see the movement". And then, she paints, with the fabric. The background is first and everything else is layered on. There is no pattern, just a vision and fabric and free cutting the pieces to fit. Pieces are pinned on layer after layer until the scene is just right. Once everything is just as she wants it, she starts fixing them to the background. The larger layers are sewn to the batting using a very tight zigzag stitch. She chooses the stitch for smaller pieces based on what she wants the piece to represent. For example her grass has a straight stitch. There is no folding of edges, everything is fitted raw edge to raw edge, oftentimes the raw edge is left exposed. When the piece is completely painted, the free quilting is done. There are swirls and straight lines and sometimes you can see where Ann has outlined a pattern in the fabric. She then adds a backing piece and sews around the entire edge of the piece with a zigzag stitch. Even the edges of her pieces are rough and uneven, adding to the the texture and movement. Writing out her process almost makes it sound easy. It isn't. It can be frustrating getting a piece exactly the right shape, finding fabric exactly the right color and sometimes finding the time. Ann has cut pieces up and started over when her vision and the piece do not mesh. It takes her about one year to complete a piece. Currently she is working up a piece based on the snow on the evergreens and ice on her pond in the winter time. She has ideas on how to create the snow flakes and glimmer of ice. It may take her some time to work it out but the vision is there and eventually, it will work its way out of her dreams and into her reality. Scenes from the Workshop
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