The Perfect BadAss

Are you ready to get to know the
best'ist BadAss Quilter around anywhere?!!

Hope you are, for today I'm featuring Maddie Kertay -- founder and amazing CREATOR of the BadAss Quilter's Society. In moments of shear exhaustion at Quilt Market (2013) we both took advantage of chairs in the GenerationQ Magazine booth -- this is where we met, and I got pinned!

What a treat it is to meet Maddie, hear her talk and call her friend. She is a force of nature when it comes to keeping it real for all quilters through her BadAss Quilter's Society efforts. And, Maddie does this all while running a successful, wonderful shop (SPOOL) in Chattanooga, TN.

Did I mention she is an accomplished sewist, too? She is, and below you'll find out a little bit about Maddie in her own words.

How did you find quilting? Or, did it find you?

I have sewn since I was quite young  but my leap to quilting was just about 4 years ago when I accidently fell into the blog Tall Grass Prairie and it made my head spin.

Where you always drawn to quilting stitch? Or, was there another part of the process that pulled you in?

For me it was the fabrics and the colors.  I realized how limited I had been in what I had seen of fabrics given that where I lived there was not much to see! And while I will always be a huge advocate for local shopping it is true that the internet really opened up my eyes to what I could do and work with as a quilt artist.

What is your favorite thing about where you are today on your quilting adventure?

My adventure has always been about empowering people to be their very best creative selves no matter what that means to them. Simple sewing or complex , I am cool with all of it. 

Has this changed from when you first set off?

I started off doing what came from inside of me. Everything I know has been self-taught and I just keep growing from there, willing to make outrageous mistakes along the way and talk about it. I think that is really important. SO many show there amazing work but so few show all the pain it takes to get there.  You have to make a lot of crap to make something amazing.

Do you see yourself at a fork in the road? If you do, can you share about what direction you may be thinking about going?

I quilt on a very limited basis these days ( but still Love it), and only projects that REALLY engaged me like the one I did for your book. My fork has taken me to being a social media cheerleader and professional Rabble-Rouser for the membership of the quilt industry. I feel it is my call to further the conversations about what it means to be a quilter. BadAss Quilters Society gives me the forum to be as loud as I want and bring attention to the parts of the industry that are amazing as well as those that need a facelift!
Below is a sneak peek at the quilting Maddie stitched into my Poppy Pod quilt to bring it into it's own.

Fun & Amazing, just like Maddie herself!
I am delighted to have had a chance to work with her and to get to know her better.

Thank You Maddie.... love you!

A Feel Good Sneak Peek

Hi All-
Today I am still in a bit of recovery from some minor surgery yesterday. Nothing serious... just things that need to be done, but boy they leave you needing a pick-me-up.

I chose a special quilt from the new book to share with you, and also give me a sunny lift, too! Have you caught on through all these quilt peeks, that the quilts here are all about 3 panels? Panels instead of blocks, and in almost every case two panels are the same only flipped? That's all I'm going to say on this for now....... it's time for a REVEAL!

The long lankly stems of these poppy pods remind me of spring... but if you get in for a closer look the quilting by Maddie Kertay -- BadAss Quilter Society creator -- really makes the story complete.

That is, complete with flowers and a wonderful dragonfly and amazing, amazing quilting.

This is Maddie,

and in case you don't know yet she is have a grand (8 grand) give-away once her FaceBook Page reaches 8,000. You won't want to miss out!  So click over and help make it happen.

Maddie is the next of the longarm quilters that will be featured here soon, so don't miss out!

Attitude is everything!

Thanks Maddie.
~Rose

The Scrappy Making of a Quitler

Hi from California!

I am having such a great time. Seeing my kids, visiting with friends in our old and sometimes new stomping grounds. There will certainly be fun things to share as a minute or two permits. Today's share is a delight for me.

Many years ago I met a very special woman... her name is Angelique and she is very dear to me. BUT, this is the tale of sharing an addiction. She had never even thought about quilting before she ran into me, though she was all about fabric and involved in the fashion industry.

Angelique visited my home studio a couple of times -- before she asked about hand stitching some basic blocks together...you know, in her spare moments.

Being very sly about the whole thing I told her to pick some fabrics from the bins...
I then cut up some small squares and showed her how to hand piece these together.

Well, these little squares grew into 4-squares, and the 4-squares grew into quilt tops, and there was no turning back!

Shopping for fabric, and tools -- learning how to use a machine, connecting with other quilters all followed... you can see why when she shared her latest/dearest project with me the other day why she accused me of being a troublemaker.

After all, she has been the recipient of numerous priority box shipments filled with scraps for this project.

These scraps held memories of quilts made by me, and it was so amazing to see them and have them be a part of a new memory for Angelique and me, too!

Isn't she doing an amazing job!!!
Hugs to Angelique -- and to all of us troublemakers.

Meet Marcia Derse

Boy I'm feeling very lucky today.
A few years back a dear friend of mine Natalie Barnes of Beyond the Reef asked me to do a demo in her booth at Long Beach Quilt Festival -- of course, I said yes and set about creating something just for this opportunity. Being that BtR is all about Hawaii & the beach I designed Ocean Waves, but when it came to fabric selection I headed to Natalie's place. She had just received in the full line of ....

you guessed it, Marcia Derse fabrics. Wow!!
I fell in love with the colors, textures and depth that
Marcia's fabric IS,

..and to have Marcia share a bit about her process,
and how it all comes together makes me feel lucky indeed.
Hope you feel the same way and enjoy the words & pictures from Marcia.

When you begin to design a line of fabric-where do you begin?

Whenever I can find the time I devote a string of days to fabric dying. I use the fabrics I make for my own artwork but I always hold back knock out colors and patterns that I can’t bear to cut up for my design collections. I just finished a small batch of new designs and was delighted to find two pieces of fabric that simply jumped out of the pile, I know they are going to inspire me to work on a new collection.

Once I have a few inspiration pieces on hand I go back through my "library" of fabrics and start pulling fabrics in order to build a color story. There is a ton of weeding out and editing during this process and the theme develops over time.

Where do you turn for inspiration?

I always find myself playing off of the seasons and the colors surrounding my home and in my garden. I spend a lot of time at home getting inspired but when I start to feel a little stir crazy I love to get out and go to the library or the art museum to find insight. Blue Tiles from the Swiss Room is a piece from my new collection Mosaic, it is inspired by a large Swiss fireplace in The Toledo Museum of Art that I have loved since I was a child reading the book Heidi.

What is your favorite part of the fabric designing process?

There are so many steps in the process. Once all the work of washing, dyeing, and ironing are done, I love the reward phase of revisiting every piece of fabric I have in my stash, opening them up and making piles of my favorites according to color and design.

When I met you, you had a sketchbook full of textures you had collected.

Do you have lots of sketchbooks filled with textures? Do you remember when you began collecting? Why did you begin & continue collecting textures?

The answer is yes, and for as long as I can remember. In my studio I have shelves of journals filled with scraps and treasures. I have a habit of pinning everything I collect on my composition wall so I can see it. More often than not, I don't have much space on my wall to work. When the walls start closing in on the artwork I take everything down and I grab a blank book and start glueing, sewing and layering all my inspiration pieces adding buttons, ribbons, papers and photos from other collections. Most of the time the book becomes a gigantic mass that hardly resembles a series of pages. I have always loved books and I find it very satisfying to have all my treasures from different eras cataloged in my studio.

 

 

All of Marcia's fabrics can be seen on her website....
click over and you will love seeing it ALL.
BUT, this weekend she will be working to put her entire new line on the site.

I will be sure to send out a reminder,
meantime I hope you enjoyed this peek into Marcia's fabric designer 'self',

as for me, I now know what I can do with all that stuff
I collect and have pinned to the walls around me!

Mixing Words & Fabric - Meet Cindy Rinne

Talk about fabric and someone always asks - ' what do you do with your scraps'.

My answer always involves Cindy Rinne. She is a long time friend, amazing art quilter and the one who loves getting a bag of its and bits from me. Cindy then takes them and transforms them through her collages.

Over the last couple of years she re- committed herself to one of her first loves, poetry... and she found ways of combining this with her fabric works.

Enough, now it's time to Meet Cindy...

Which came first the poetry or the quilts, and how did you get started with quilt making?
The poetry came first as I started out as a watercolorist and then acrylic painter. I have always liked collage and included texture in my water media works. I was adhering photo transfers on fabric and fabric squares in the 9-patch block onto wood when I was invited to my first quilt meeting. Both of my friends were painters and had gotten involved with quilting. I enjoyed the guild meetings, especially learning about the history of fabrics and the history behind the various traditional blocks. I attended for three years before trying quilting. I was having my photo transfers done at a quilt shop. The owner, assuming I was a quilter, said that these photos on muslin will make beautiful quilts. I drove away thinking that I am not a quilter, but the idea stuck. I designed my first art quilt and never looked back.
When did the light bulb go off about combining these?
The light bulb went off last summer. I helped to start a poetry critique group called PoetrIE. I was seriously getting into poetry by last summer. I even had a bio of poems being published. A poetry friend of mine and I decided to do a drawing-a-day for the month of July. At the same time, my PoetrIE group decided to write a poem-a-day. It was a crazy month trying to write and draw everyday, but transformation came. The story I was writing became the source for my drawings. I translated the word "drawing" into using fabric, ink, pencil, etc. I will be having a solo show of this work next spring including a reading at the opening of the poetry we both wrote for this story.

I know you like using others scraps ....when did this begin, and what's the best thing about using these scraps?
As I said, I have always enjoyed collage. Before I was mostly collaging paper. Now I began to collage with fabrics. In art quilts I could use most any fabric as my pieces are not washed. The best thing about using scraps from others is that I think about them as I use their fabrics, including you! This way each of my fiber pieces is a community. I've even had people come to my exhibits and pick out the fabric they gave me. It's fun for them to see what I did with their treasures. I receive some special fabrics (international, vintage) because I only need small pieces.

What is one of your favorite ways to spend an afternoon?
I enjoy being in nature which inspires both my art and poetry, but as much as I quilt and write alone, friends and community are vital to me.

 

 

Hope you enjoyed meeting Cindy.
Fantastic use of scraps don't you think?!?
(btw - Cindy is in one of the pictures on my header -- can you find her?)