Once a quarter, I have two guild meetings the same week. This month both Northwest Quilters’ Guild and the Columbia FiberArts Guild had wonderful speakers for their evening programs.
Rob Appell, who bills himself under the Man Sewing brand, gave a high-energy, entertaining program at Northwest Quilters. It was easily the longest program I’ve ever experienced at any guild meeting. He entertained and informed. Along the way, he discusses how he achieved sobriety and the change it has made in his life, and I’m sure of his family’s. He is a surfer who worked in his mother’s quilt shop, which led to his interest in and profession in quilting. The first number of quilts he showed featured the ocean, its plants and animals. He is now partnering with the Missouri Star Quilt Co. and teaches a variety of workshops. Here are a few of the quilts he showed as his more recent.
“Coming Home” by Rob Appell
Rob has quite a story to tell about this quilt both in the purpose for its creation and his path to sobriety.
“Operation Homefront” by Rob Appell
Rob has created ” Color Strata” quilts after the ones done by Libby Lehman and offers workshops to make them.
“Color Strata” by Rob Appell
“Color Strata Variation” by Rob Appell
I really like the simplicity of this flower. And as you can see, Rob is always moving. It was a challenge to get quilts straight on.
“Color Strata Flower” by Rob Appell
Rob has invented the Shark Appli-Cutter, a type of rotary cutter, which coincidentally was featured in my The Quilt Show e-mail today. The blade is only 14mm. You use it as if you are drawing on fabric with a pencil, but you are cutting the fabric at the same time. The small blade is meant for cutting curves without templates. I bought one to use for my next piece, which will have dozens of petals and leaves. I think it will be so much faster than cutting each of them out with scissors. I will report back.
Lisa Kokin was our speaker at the Columbia FiberArts Guild. As someone who has made her living as an artist, she was inspiring. I loved the way her work looked so beautiful viewed from a distance, but up close, you could see she had used everyday materials in unexpected ways. She did not have any work on display, so I pulled some images from her website that she showed in her Power point presentation.
This first piece is Lucre One made of metallic thread and shredded money purchased from the Federal Reserve. I spent fifteen years in banking and knew you could buy shredded bills, but Lisa is the first person I’ve met who has actually done so and used them in art. You need to look at the detail shot to see the shredded dollars. She also calls this piece “The Wall” and joked that she tried to get Mexico to pay for it, but they wouldn’t!
“Lucre One” by Lisa Kokin
“Lucre One” by Lisa Kokin, detail
This piece is constructed from shapes cut from book covers. Lisa uses water soluble stabilizer on which to stitch her pieces. She doesn’t worry how soaking the piece to remove the stabilizer affects her materials, in this case, the pieces of book covers.
“Panacea-Pizpireta” by Lisa Kokin
The piece below was a commission and is also constructed of elements cut from book covers. I thought this was beautiful.
“Story Book” by Lisa Kokin
If your group is looking for speakers, I highly recommend both Lisa and Rob.
