NOTE: Materials fees are required for some workshops. These fees are paid directly to faculty and are not part of your registration fee.
Improvisational piecing has been around for as long a quilting has existed. However, when we talk about the history of quitting, it is often neglected. The intentionality behind perfectly imperfect works is rarely discussed in favor of technically masterful works, overlooking the amount of mastery that goes into these less prototypical, “traditional” quilts. In this lecture, we will take a look back at some of the earliest examples of improv and explore how this approach has developed over the last 200 or so years. We will talk about how the visual language has changed and what commonalities run through these works from different places and times. Some of the artists discussed will be earlier anonymous works, Harriet Powers, the Gees Bend Quilters, Molly Upton, Sherri Lynn Wood, and Jennifer Candon, among others.
