CAMEO Quit Guild Hosts Karen Turckes of Windberry Studio

On May 17, 2018, the CAMEO Quilters Guild hosted Karen Turckes of Windberry Studio as their speaker. Karen uses hand dyed fabrics, fabric manipulation, and surface design in her quilts.

Karen holds a degree in Textile and Clothing Degree from Michigan State University and is a graduate of Jane Dunnewold’s Surface Design Mastery Program. She has participated in the Grand Rapids Art Prize and her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums.

Samples were passed through the audience. Below is a pillow with trapunto work, traditionally created by stuffing wadding between lines of quilt stitching. Karen uses a layer of batting to quilt the top, then cuts out the batting outside the stitching lines, and then used another layer of batting behind the whole top.

The sample below demonstrates the use of machine stitches and couched cording in surface design, which she then machine quilted.

Using a stabilizer fabric, Karen machine embroiders commercial fabric. The stabilizer washes out.

Karen uses a folded fabric technique similar to Cathedral Windows to create blocks which are set together in the quilts below.

In this project, she used two fabrics to create a fold that contrasts with the inset and outer fabrics.

Fabric can be folded and pressed to create texture. In the pillow below a folded purple fabric gives visual interest. It is embellished with Chinese coins.

The fabric is folded and pressed to create roseate forms in the quilt below.

Here is another example of fabric that is pressed, with inserts of her folded blocks, all sewn down flat.

The round folded top was created with a center hole later filled in with an insert and button.

A sampler shows many ways of using manipulated fabric.

Fabric can be sewn to a base that shrinks, resulting in a puckered look. Here Karen tried a whole applique block. She also uses the method to create textured fabrics for her landscape quilts.

Samples of hand dyed fabrics using various methods were also passed around including folded fabrics, use of dye resist wax, printing, and other methods.

Karen was to lead a class in designing landscape quilts but we only saw slides of her work. Her process is quite simple, starting with three fabrics for sky, water or main section, and near section. She adds elements of natural or manmade structures, animals, trees, etc. When she is satisfied she irons the pre-fused fabrics in place and embellishes with thread and quilting.

Karen warns that Steam-a-Seam II must be ironed to fabrics with a hot steam iron. She uses a denim needle to sew through the fused or folded layers of fabric.

During her presentation, Karen covered all the techniques for surface and fabric manipulation and fabric dying as a basic introduction.

Autumn Leaves

I have always loved fall best of all the seasons. I love the colors of the leaves, the gold and reds, the browns and oranges. When I was a girl, every fall my family took a day trip to the Allegheny Mountains to see friends on a farm. I loved how the colored trees looked on the hillsides, huge rounded masses of color next to color.

My mom was an oil painter, and her earliest paintings were copies of Robert Wood landscapes, trees in autumn. This still life painting hangs in my aunt's house, and was Mom painted it in the early 1960s.

When our son was little, we would walk into town together as a family, sometimes to go to the school playground and sometimes to visit the ice cream stand. One autumn, I noticed red leaves on a branch against a brilliant blue sky. I later took a photograph, and some years later it became the center of a quilt.

I used bleach and a fine permanent marker for leaf details. The branches are knotted in places. I then added a border of pieced leaves. It is all hand appliqued and hand quilted.The fabrics are all hand dyed, some purchased and some I dyed.

I also have a nice collection of handkerchiefs featuring leaves, and have always planned to make an entire hanky quilt of leaves!

The trees are still green here along the West Michigan lake shore. A little red is showing here and there, so I expect a glorious riot of color is to come. Nature's last hurrah before its long sleep.