Learn How To Make Landscape Art Quilts, Step-by-step, with Anne Loveless

Michigan quilters are proud of our own Ann Loveless who won the 2013 Grand Rapids ArtPrize for her Sleeping Bear Dune Lakeshore landscape quilt (seen on the book cover) as well as a viewer's choice award. The dunes quilt is constructed in 5 'x 5' panels. But Ann's techniques also create smaller quilts, and in this book she shares her methods.

Ann Loveless with her prize-winning quilt

Most of Ann's quilts are inspired by Michigan scenes, places, forests and flora: Trillium, sand dunes, Pictured Rocks along Lake Superior, lighthouses, the Mackinac Bridge, birch forests, quiet ponds.

The book is in three parts:

• Planning, designing, and preparing to make your art quilt
• A Photo Gallery of Collage Quilts
• Constructing and finishing your art quilt

Ann also shares her quilt story and resources.

Ann's own quilts help to illustrate basic concepts of color theory and color value, and she covers composition, selection of inspiration photo, and photo transfer methods. She covers fabric choices and threads, supplies, and quilting options.

Ann's approach is improvisational. She does not create patterns, but freeform cuts fabric and places her pieces. The raw edge applique is machine quilted. The result is an "impressionistic" look. She also creates "confetti" quilts with pre-fused fabrics on a fused mosaic background.

Now, for many quilters that sounds impossible. But it is how I created my Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe portrait quilts. I hand drew the face, cut out the background face fabric, and free hand cut and placed pre-fused pieces. You have to trust your instinct.

Detail of William Shakespeare by Nancy A. Bekofske

from Landscape Art Quilts by Ann Loveless

Many of the Gallery quilts include her inspiration photographs and details of the quilt. At her website you can see her small mosaic, collage, impressionistic, and large fabric mosaic quilts currently for sale at her shop State of the Art Framing and Gallery in Beulah.

In Part Three, Ann walks you through duplicating one of her art quilts. Lake Collage, 14" x 18", is a typical Michigan view of the lake seen from a sandy lakeshore framed by trees. Photographs and text explain every step in great detail, right through making the binding and rod pocket. It is the best step-by-step guide I have seen.

I highly recommend this book for quilters who want to learn how to make landscape quilts.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Landscape Art Quilts, Step-by-Step
Learn Fast, Fusible Fabric Collage with Ann Loveless
Ann Loveless
Kansas City Star Quilts
ISBN: 978-1-61169-145-0
 Book ($27.95)
 eBook ($19.99