The Artist

I am an art quilter exploring stories starting with a photograph.

Vintage photographs, family albums , snapshots and digital collages documenting my life are my primary subject matter.  

Every art quilt I make has a rich subtext - a hidden story.

Creating allows me, as an artist; to think deeply about my life and celebrate the joy I find everyday

cover portrait

My process starts with a digital image. I use photo manipulation software to enhance or create a new composition. The digital file is sent to a commercial fabric printer. When the fabric arrives in my studio, I use a variety of  materials including dyes, pigment sticks and paints directly on the cloth.  As I quilt through the cloth, batting and backing; I am  drawing with thread to create a rich and visually exciting  work of art.

Margaret Abramshe was born in Honolulu Hawaii in 1959 to family of academics. She studied for her BFA at the University of Colorado at Boulder, received a degree in Art Education from Florida International University and a Master’s in Fine Art from the University of Northern Colorado. She spent her career as public school educator, a mentor teacher, wrote numerous grants and was part of district wide curriculum writing teams in Jefferson County Colorado.

Since retiring, Margaret has devoted her time to being studio artist working as an art quilter.  In the past three years Margaret’s art quilts have been included in numerous local, national and international shows.

Recent Posts

My YouTube Channel

July Post Channel

 

 

Teaching gives the gift of deeper understanding of a subject to the teacher.

As a person who spent her career in the classroom, I had been hesitant to start on that path again. People often ask me “Do you teach?” My reply has been that I am focused on my own work in my studio.

Recently I got the itch to share my knowledge. 

As an art teacher there is a hard rule: Don’t ever present a project to a class without having made that project. I often made numerous sample projects over summer breaks or after school until I could make them in a fraction of the time I would  allot to my students.

I knew I had a project locked down when I could write down the lesson with a description of the supplies, setup and steps in less than 15 minutes. It was ingrained in my brain. Another sign of readiness was being able to easily modify the project for different ages, time constraints, limitations in space or supplies came easily. 

Now that I am retired, I have enjoyed leading a friendship group at my local quilt guild. In that group I shared some basic principles of art, some techniques and little art history. This has been a real joy.  One of the members of this group asked me to share some information about how I printed photographs onto cloth.

She is only of many people who see one of my quilts and ask “How do you do that?” Now I have an answer to that question: Check out my YouTube channel. 

YouTube is an amazing platform helps meet the needs of a variety of learners. Because a presentation is easily shared and can be viewed multiple times it’s a tool that anyone can use as a reference. It is also arranged in format that is good for the brain.

Research says our brains like to take a break after 20 minutes of instruction. Good teachers understand that pace and incorporate something different before piling on more information. Ask the class to get up even for a minute, write down a note, share your understanding with partner, etc…

When I was teaching middle school I always limited my instruction to the first 10 minutes of class. So when I created this presentation on how to get a photo from a phone printed on cloth I aimed for 10 minutes of instruction. 

The video is now up on YouTube and I plan to create several more. It has been fun to figure out this process. I hope in the future that I will see more art quilters using photographs. 

Until next time…….

Apply and Adapt

In my May post I described the wonderful week I had at the “Empty Spools Retreat”. In this post,  I am going to share with you how I applied what I learned and adapted that leaning to my own work. Sometimes people  are so impressed with a teacher or a quilt; they too fully embrace […]

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Invest in your Art: Empty Spools Retreat

I spent last week at “Empty Spools”, a quilt retreat located in Asilomar. Asilomar is a California State Park located just north of Pebble Beach. It is stunningly beautiful. The retreat lasts for five weeks and offers workshops in traditional and art quilting. Participants often return year after year with friends who make this more […]

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A Professional Tribe

At a recent quilt guild show, a fellow quilt artist mentioned they did not join SAQA because there were “no meetings.” Her expectations centered around a perception of SAQA as organization just like her local quilt guild would be if it was only made up of art quilters. This conversation made me think more deeply […]

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Not All Art Quilts Are Flat!

As I write this post, I looked  down at the calendar I almost missed the fact that this is the first day of March! Another year sailing by too quickly. My life since retirement has increasingly been focused on creating work for entry into art quilt exhibitions. The first three months of this year contain […]

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