Thread Painting- Special Exhibit

I want to tell you about the special exhibit at the quilt show that I know you will find as impressive and inspiring as I did. The show always features a special guest quilt artist and their work and this year it was Judith Phelps from Battle Ground, Washington. She is a lovely lady and talented artist. I was privileged to have a long conversation with her about her process and I'm excited to be signed up for the class she is teaching for our guild next month. 

Her art quilts are a blend of realism (almost hyper-realism) and impressionistic use of bits of fabric accentuated with meticulous thread painting.  

Judith told me that she starts by painting the picture on fabric using special fabric paints and ink pens. She then "paints" them with thread. I marveled at the perfection of the stitches because I had spent a day working on a small piece and struggling to keep my thread tension balanced. She confessed that she sometimes has to tear out areas that don't have the perfect stitches that she requires. 

This close up of the stitches gives you an idea of the COMPLEXITY of her work!

This is the BACK of the quilt! She changes the top thread and the bobbin thread to achieve this!

Those quilts were densely "thread painted" but she also has works that use more bits of fabric to achieve the realism of her images. I love this piece that shows the cycle of nature in our forests after a fire. 

This frayed string with a swing was a sweet finishing touch to the piece. 

 I spent several long minutes examining the details of this dragon piece. There was so much to see! A detail that a young girl noticed was that the artist hid numerous animals in the clouds.

I placed my finger here for reference to see how tiny the bits of fabric are for each roof and building and tree. 

There were several villages and castles in the landscape.

This is painted with fabric paint and pens and then accentuated with thread painting. 

I knew Sarah would LOVE this Zendangle horse!

I'm very much looking forward to Judith's class on using Inktense Pencils! Check out more of her amazing work on her website.