A few years ago SAQA expanded its mission concept and statement, adding 3D quilted objects to its former focus, the fairly modern artform of wall quilts that descended from historic traditional quilts. Since the late 80s, 3D forms were increasingly appearing in art quilt exhibitions, and SAQA now accomodates popular use of quilting techniques and materials in soft sculptures including the various vessel types of bowl, basket, box and vase that are popular with this group. SAQA started up a 3D Special Interest Group aa few years ago, which I joined, and it focuses on quilted objects that are outside the two dimensional wall quilts that have always been the backbone of the Studio Art Quilt Associates organisation.
I began making art quilts in 1988, but since the late 80’s I’d been paart of the Creative Embroidery movement of that era, during which time I’d made several soft sculptures, among them my all-time triumph, my 1987 soft sculpture of the historic Golden Eagle nugget. (backstory gold nugget soft scuplture)
I made several fabric covered bowls in the late 1990s, and a couple of fabric covered boxes in 1986-7 of which I don’t have pics, but I also experimented in 2021 (pandemic) with box-shapes as a shadow box kind of presentation for some stitchery- and maybe I should revisit that idea.
The other main application of 3D is bas relief 3D elements attached to 2D wall quilts, which is how I’d describe most of my 3D work up until the Growth series of embellished stuffed Suffolk Puffs that I’ve been exploring in the last two years –
Recently on Instragram I visited a textile artist Victoria Gertenbach who does lots of 3D elements and small items like embroidered fabric beads, mats and vessels. In that link are two small vessels she posted last year (2025) showing me enough to work out how she probably makes them. They’re small, and she commented that the left, more yellow one, was still a bit floppy but would stiffen up with more stitching. She doesn’t give dimensions for her works so I’m not sure, but this newer one posted earlier this year could be larger, and I feel she probably added stiffening during that construction. Milliners’ stiffening and lightweight canvas would both work here, and the product called fosshape that SAQA’s in N.America and probably Europe – maybe everywhere except LATAM – all adore working with! But anyway, I have a heap of old Xray photos that will be great. They’re easy to sew through by hand or machine, and for something fairly large I’d machine two of them together to form one (stronger) sheet.
And because you are super-knowledgeable, I’m sure you have seen Paula Kovarik’s 3D work, but here’s a link to one of her series just for the fun of looking again. You always have such interesting posts!
https://www.paulakovarik.com/series#/herd/
Thanks – I try to be interesting – it’s also a record to myself, of course – my visual diary so to speak. Yes, I’ve seen some of these, and Paula said somewhere recently she’s been cutting and re-piecing some of her older works into new 2D and 3D works. She has an instantly recognisable style of surface design and quilting, doesn’t she? I must say I’ve cut down several of my own recently – one is the piece I gave for this year’s SAQA Benefit Auction… I have some bits of that left but I’m not sure I’ll do anything with them, so they’re in the sample box at the moment 🙂 A wonderful fibre artist here, Bernardo Cardarelli, does 3D installations which I love, and I met him at his recent opening in MVD; and he let me manually inspect pieces of one while telling me how he constructs some of them, and said he often recycles bits from one installation by using them in a new work. Now THAT gave me something to really think about!
I’ve been thinking a lot more about recycling some of my work, but I’m not into 3D at all. I’m leaning more into my love of geometric shapes and graphic design. I have quite a few pieces that I no longer care for and I want to have at ’em with a rotary cutter. The only thing holding me back is time……hockey season is starting and grandson hockey comes before quilting time! You do keep me inspired, though, so thanks!
We all make time for the things that are THE most important to us, and you’re lucky to be able to be so involved in your grandkids’ lives. We’ve always had to live far away from our grandkids, and visited them just periodically – like one set of my own grandparents. The other was just up the hill from my home. My husband knew only his maternal ones, and only met his biological father when he was 57 and becoming grandfather himself, so mever met those grandparents. Our kids knew all their grandparents who we visited as often as possible while they w ere still with us – always on the other side of the country though, as Mike’s profession kept us always a whole continent away from where we both grew up, in northern Tasmania – still, all the grandparents and other close relatives were within a small radius when we were able get there !!!