Amy Butler Talks Fabric

Last weekend Quilters Take Manhattan came to, well, Manhattan!  It's the busiest weekend of the year at my LQS, The City Quilter, so it's all hands to help on the shop floor meaning I don't get to actually attend the event anymore.  It's not all bad news, I do get to meet all the quilty names that drop by the store to teach classes, give talks, meet up, etc.

This last weekend was no exception - in fact, it was marvellous - and the absolute best bit was that I got to nip over to FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) to meet Amy Butler, escort her back to the store, then host the Saturday afternoon Amy Butler Talks Fabric event.

Amy was, as anticipated, super lovely - and very understanding when I apologised for taking a 5-second peep at my mobile phone to see if my Grandson had been born as my DIL was in labour!  As it was he kept us waiting a further 3 hours!!!

Anyway, time to share with you the pics I took on behalf of The City Quilter during Amy's talk.  

 The Glow Trunk Show collection

Piecing, quilting and ribbon embellishment

Check out the handles on this incredible tote - a fab reuse of one of Amy's leather belts.

Beautiful surface detail and texture.

Ocean Wave Knit Pillow - made with Glow Knit fabric.

that knit fabric is super soft

Amy showing off her Glow Voile Quilt with a little help from the artist and designer Luke Haynes - made with Glow Voile and solid ivory voile.  Read more about my workshop with Luke Haynes here.

The back of the Glow Voile quilt

The Glow House Quilt - pattern designed by Lucy Fazely.

Amy's dress matches her projects!!! - If you love it like I do the pattern is from the I Am Cute Dresses book by Sato Watanabe.

A close up of Amy's Glow House quilt.

Eye candy everywhere!!!

Amy talked us through her design process from concept to fabric production to sales point.

And that's me with Amy - Amy's soooo tall (and I'm not!), in this pic I'm on my tip toes and Amy's bending down!!!

If you'd like to see more pics from the event you can follow this link through to the store's Facebook photo album

What a great weekend :D

For details of other fabric, yarn, trim and notion stores that I've visited around the world along with the NYC stores I love, exhibitions and events I've attended and wonderful people I've been lucky to meet click the links below or in my sidebar :D

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only, no payment or commission is received on click-throughs and opinions are my own.

Clothes To Quilts

I know, I know I've already made 2 quilts from shirts - 

remember my 'Dad's Memory' quilt (May-Sept 2012)

and my 'Even The Dog's Got Two' quilt made for my husband back in 2013? 

but when I got the opportunity to attend Luke Haynes' Clothes To Quilts workshop at the Brooklyn Craft Company two weekends ago I grabbed it.  I was interested to see his technique in action - who wouldn't be, have you ever seen his quilts?  

December 2013 I saw several of Luke's quilts in the alt_quilts: Sabrina Gschwandtner, Luke Haynes, Stephen Sollins exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, NYC.  It was a last minute, "let's pop in here while we're at the Christmas Market" moment for me and Flicky, only had my phone with me and the pics aren't that good so I didn't share them but this seems like the right moment for that regardless.

Chuck Close inspired and architect trained, Luke creates his pieces mostly from thrift store clothing.

 

No, it's not a stretched photo, Luke plays with perspective when he creates his work and it's viewed differently from all angles.

 

 

 

and a closer look at the detail - sheets, jeans, metallic thread and more

 

Quite amazing - if you stand at the right angle Franklin sits right up on the corner of the bed!

So I headed over to Brooklyn Craft Company and took Luke's workshop.  It was a great day and turns out we both use the exact same method for deconstructing shirts, I guess maybe there's not that many ways to do it?!!!

Now for a look at my work.  

Early in the process...

...and completed - I totally forgot to take pics along the way, I was too engrossed in what I was creating!

The method of piecing was fun - I've done the same myself before but haven't pushed myself quite as many times when recutting and rejoining my already created piece.

Here's some close up detail

The red section is the label from inside the shirt back - I think it really adds something to an otherwise quite dull colourway - and, of course, the red draws your eye and grabs your attention.

My favourite bit is the pocket and button.

There's no way I'd have created this amount of movement and sewn such small pieces without continuing to reconstruct, cut and reconstruct, over and over.

The finished piece is a 32" square, I haven't decided what to do with it yet but maybe I'll include it as a panel in the back of another quilt I'm working on, we'll see.

One of Luke's pieces constructed using this method.

And this is Luke's Instagram pic from the workshop.  Several of my quilty friends were there too: Chris (The Tattooed Quilter); Nellie (Mama Peaches); Tina (The Other Side Of The Pom) Maria and Chris.

If you want to find out more about Luke's work here's a link to his website and also his Facebook page - go check it out and be inspired and Bernina's We All Sew website has a great tute from Luke on how to deconstruct a shirt too.

For details of other fabric, yarn, trim and notion stores that I've visited around the world along with the NYC stores I love, exhibitions and events I've attended and wonderful people I've been lucky to meet click the links below or in my sidebar :D

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only, no payment or commission is received on click-throughs and opinions are my own.

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