{"id":2295,"date":"2013-08-15T15:18:53","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T20:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=2295"},"modified":"2024-12-09T08:32:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T13:32:58","slug":"wavy-edges-of-wall-quilts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=2295","title":{"rendered":"Wavy Edges of Wall Quilts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the US visiting grandchildren over the past few weeks, I was fortunate to be able\u00a0to wangle visits to several textile exhibitions, including the SAQA NM\u00a0 Members’ exhibition at Santa Fe, The ‘SPUN’ and Nick Cave exhibits at the Denver Art Museum, The Front Range Contemporary Quilters’ show at Golden and, next door, a fabulous fibre exhibition the name of which escapes me for the moment but I will blog separately on it, and there were\u00a0some wonderful art quilts at the Lincoln Centre at Fort Collins CO.\u00a0 I saw some wonderful textile art, but I was struck by the number of wall quilts I saw that clearly\u00a0were not\u00a0meant to buckle and roll out from the flat plane of the wall.\u00a0 Consider these examples are from the SAQA New Mexico members’ exhibition at the State Capitol Building in Santa Fe:<\/p>\n

\"SAQA<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SAQA<\/a><\/p>\n

In all\u00a0possibly about 1\/3 of the works hung had what I think were some degree of\u00a0 3-d that were not intentional, and these were the most marked cases, being forward of the wall by several inches.\u00a0 \u00a0But don’t get me wrong –\u00a0this show of SAQA NM members’ art quilts was interesting, lively, and there were some arresting works of art.\u00a0 I particularly liked the drama of all Michelle Jackson’s pieces but especially her ‘Adobe Shadow Dance’ and was very taken with Nancy Steidle’s ‘October Aspens’.\u00a0 Now the show had been up for a couple of months, and it was raining heavily for several hours the day we went, so the air was damp – I am not sure this was the only cause of this\u00a0problem, though.<\/p>\n

After seeing this exhibition I\u00a0thought a great deal about whether this is really an issue, or if it was me just being picky.\u00a0 I talked it over with a couple of other veteran art quilters, and\u00a0it bothers them, too, and so I’m putting it out here – ‘Yes, it does bother me… and if me, then possibly other members of the viewing public, too.’\u00a0 If any of these works were mine, they would not have gone out in public without the issue being addressed – and we’ve all had the problem one time or another.\u00a0\u00a0Someone suggested younger people were involved\u00a0because they\u00a0didn’t start out with the same general sewing skills we oldies who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s did – and that could be.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em> I know, there are no rules that say a wall quilt must be flat – and heavens, the wonderful El Anatsui piece that I saw at the Denver Art Museum affirms draping ‘textile’ art\u00a0is fine, and I’ve done it myself, too.\u00a0 Regina Benson these days manages a fair bit of relief in her wall hung installations of course, and some\u00a0are actually walk-through – there’s never any\u00a0mistaking her intention.\u00a0 But these quilts I’m talking of were clearly meant\u00a0to hang flat.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Many art quilts today are heavily and closely machine quilted.\u00a0 Technically its highly fashionable.\u00a0\u00a0When a wall quilt is heavily and closely machine quilted, most likely the result will not be ‘flat’ all over: such pieces tend to distort, because the quilter tends to sew\u00a0mostly in the same direction, and I think it happens more often using a domestic machine rather than a long arm quilting setup.\u00a0 But either way, there are a couple of things you can do to improve the situation:<\/p>\n

If an edge is not quite flat against the table, when you apply a binding or facing you can gently tighten the binding<\/em> <\/span>along the sections that are ‘loose’ which will draw it in a bit, and this may be enough.\u00a0 You might need to pin and re-pin a couple of times to get it right, but this\u00a0can be enough, and is\u00a0very worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Instinct and\/or experience, however,\u00a0may tell you the treatment needs to be more drastic.\u00a0 If there are several loose sections, I have\u00a0sometimes found it very successful to run several fine gathering lines of stitches parallel to the edge and about 1\/2″\/1cm apart.\u00a0 See diagram below. <\/em><\/span>If you’ve already rushed the binding on, take it off.\u00a0 The buckled areas should be treated as separate ‘regions’ of the quilt.\u00a0 Using a strong thread in tones of the backing fabric, fasten one end with\u00a0a knot or stitches to anchor it, very close to the edge and then parallel to the quilt’s edge, \u00a0running lines of small stitches on the surface and\u00a0longer ones beneath it out of sight, and leave the end hanging free. Repeat several times until you’ve covered the problem area.\u00a0With the quilt flat on the table or hanging face towards the wall, gently pull each thread until the fullness is gathered in, and it won’t need much, you’ll find.\u00a0 Fasten off the ends of the thread and bury them.<\/p>\n

\"wavy<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And finally a word about blocking.\u00a0<\/em><\/span> A fine spray application of water is made to the quilt while it is pinned or pegged out somehow in an exact rectilinear shape, and once it has thoroughly dried it is ‘straight’.\u00a0 It’s a procedure commonly done\u00a0to intense embroidery like needlepoint before framing or mounting,\u00a0which is then held into position by that frame or mount for the rest of its life.\u00a0\u00a0Many quilters talk of blocking their quilts, before or after finishing – but either way, IMHO it’s a temporary technique that I would never rely on.\u00a0 A wall quilt can certainly be put through this process and ‘straightened up’, but\u00a0it can lose its nice blocked status when hung in a more humid atmosphere for display.\u00a0 So, rather a waste of time and effort, IMHO.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the US visiting grandchildren over the past few weeks, I was fortunate to be able\u00a0to wangle visits to several textile exhibitions, including the SAQA NM\u00a0 Members’ exhibition at Santa Fe, The ‘SPUN’ and Nick Cave exhibits at the Denver Art Museum, The Front Range Contemporary Quilters’ show at Golden and, next door, a fabulous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-B1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2295"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9087,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions\/9087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}