Art quilts and musings!

Hello.....I'm Marty of Marty's Fiber Musings. I'm in love with art. But I think art is a mindset...it can be anything we view - whether it's a quilt, stitched cloth, paint on fabric or stretched canvas, sketches on paper or fabric: well, you get the (art) picture! You see, I often quilt, draw, take pictures and muse. That's why I started my blog where I can post about anything I create.

I enjoy being invited to share my work and today it's all about art quilts.....
Please click to enlarge each picture to get the full impact!

"Callie" is free-motion thread-sketched on fabric. I take pictures of my originals and reprint the images on fabric. I like doing it this way to preserve the original. I can then make any number of art quilts by reproducing images and setting them with different border fabrics. You can see more of my thread-sketching on my website.

Here is another way I like to have fun. I surround interesting tidbits of fabric with white, then come back with a patch of color in the binding. They are usually small pieces of art that can be hung in a group or used individually as table toppers. Either way, I find they are great conversation pieces!

A most delicious way to use thread extraordinaire is to take a floral print and enhance it. I used a gold metallic thread to outline the sunflowers and fill the centers with heavy stitching. It worked wonders on this sunflower scrap that was left from another quilt. Add a fun binding and voila, you have an art quilt!

Oh and the holidays! I can keep the Christmas spirit all year long while working on raw-edge applique trees. This little red and black and white one is named "surround sound."







And my favorite background for an art quilt is to collage fabric scraps, then embellish the collage with pretty thread and yarn.


My latest mantra goes something like this - "When life gives you scraps, just sew them together."