2012 Series by Diane

Diane's painted Maverick work in the 2012 series, Art with a Needle and Thread , is in a sketchbook style and reflects her exploration with sketching, lettering and water colours.  You can read more about this meditative practice on Tea and Talk for Two, a trans-Atlantic blog conversation that she engages in with UK Twelve Helen.

2012 Series by Françoise

Françoise's 2012 series reflects her love of all things Japanese and she is continuing her Japanese studies in 2013: She also bought herself a loom as an early Christmas present.  See the beautiful results on Françoise's blog.

2012 series by Gerrie

Congratulations to Gerrie who has two articles in the Winter 2013 issue of Art Quilting Studio. 
 
Gerrie has made many aspen-inspired quilts, including her BrownSageBlue challenge and one of the articles showcases her aspen quilts.  The second article reviews Gerrie's creative process in Art Cloth Constructions.  There are lots of wonderful photos!

Gerrie has also been undertaking a personal 3x3 project in 2012.  It will be exciting to see what it looks like on New Year's Day!

2012 Series by Karen

Congratulations to Karen whose textile work, High Water Mark, was chosen from over 851 entries for Quilt National 2013, the eighteenth international juried competition for new innovative quilts, on display May 24 – September 2, 2013 at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, Ohio (USA).

2012 Series by Kristin

If you haven't already done so, check out Kristin's revamped website www.kristinlaflamme.com which include her Army Wives series. On her blog, Kristin has recently announced a daily self-portrait project for the next year..  Do you have something creative planned for 2013?

2012 Series by Kirsten

Kirsten is looking forward to seeing the Colourplay Series for the first time "in the cloth" at the Australasian Quilt Convention, Melbourne, Australia, 18-21 April 2013 and to sharing the collection with her local community in Townsville at Pinnacles Gallery, 29 April - 31 May 2013.

By the way, please contact us if you can help with our exhibition at Craft & Quilt Fair, Palmerston North, New Zealand 14-17 February 2013.  We are looking for someone to install the exhibit on Wednesday afternoon and take it down on Sunday so this is your chance to get up close and personal with the Twelve by Twelve work (and get a free pass to the show).

2012 Series by Terry

Terry looks forward to experimenting more with over-dyed shirtings in 2013  She is also giving a talk and slideshow presentation to two Guilds in Oregon early in the New Year:

• Mid-valley Quilt Guild in Salem, Oregon, 30 January 2013; and
• Northwest Quilters in Portland, Oregon, 11 February 2013.

2012 Series by Brenda

Working out design and technical issues in a small format builds skills for tackling larger projects. Brenda is indebted to the Twelve by Twelve project for sparking several series in her portfolio including:

Dreamlines

Desire Lines 

Shibori 

Brenda's new instructional DVD Improvising Using Stacks of Solids is now on sale with the special issue of Modern Quilts by Quilters Companion.  The magazine also includes an in-depth profile and images of some of Brenda's recent work.  Brenda is hosting a series of giveaways on her blog to celebrate.

2012 Series by Terri

Terri has a new line of stencil designs available from the Stencil Girl website and bags, art quilts and other creations for sale in Terri's Etsy Shop. You are all invited to join Terri on her new facebook page www.facebook.com/TerriStegmillerArtQuilts

2012 Series by Deborah

Throughout the 2012 Series and the entire Twelve by Twelve collaboration, Deborah has developed and refined her own personal set of  shapes, symbols and motifs using layering and collage techniques.  Deborah shares these techniques in her video workshop, Contemporary Fabric Collage: Design, Stitch and Finish which  includes chapters on fabric selection, composition, using sheer fabrics, stitching by machine and by hand, and unique finishing options. The workshop is available as a DVD and as a digital download.  Both are currently on sale (at least at the time of writing).

Twelve Times Twelve Times Twenty Times ?

Goodness!  When we started our Twelve by Twelve challenge back in the fall of 2007, we had no idea that it would bring us to where we are.  288 12-inch square quilts... 60 20x12 inch quilts... A book... Magazine articles ... Exhibits all over the world... Friends and fans who know our work and have emailed us and come up to us at shows to tell us how we've inspired them... Opportunities to lecture and teach... Challenge groups modeled after ours...  It has been an amazing 5 years.

I think all of us would say that, for all of the fun and inspiration we've experienced over this period, the best part has been the community we have formed together.  We've not just become art partners to share our creative passions, explorations and frustrations -- we've become fast friends.  Some of us haven't met in person, but we've discovered that that little fact hardly matters.  We KNOW each other, and we are well and truly bonded by this experience.

We've just concluded the five 12x20 inch challenge set.  As always, Brenda has done an amazing job of putting the images together on our website, and you can see them all together here.

After four years of working with a 12x12 inch square, I think we all enjoyed -- and were challenged by -- a different format.  Our color themed challenge set will be traveling for exhibits in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the US in 2013.  (You can see the schedule here.)

But that brings us to now, and the question we keep getting:

What next? 

Well, we're working on that.  We have decided a few things.  We do not want to do periodic challenges the way we have been.  We want to work in a larger size.  Some of us may not continue, needing to turn their creative energies to a different direction.  But many of us are dedicated to doing SOMETHING together. We just haven't yet nailed down the specifics.

So while Twelve by Twelve as you've seen us may be changing, rest assured that we don't plan on  disbanding or disappearing totally.  We're evolving.

Watch this space.  We will keep you posted.

2012 Series by Nikki

The Twelve by Twelve website has been updated* and now includes images of all of the works in our 2012 Series including the latest Sweet Challenge. The Artist Gallery pages have been updated too.  It's fun to see the art quilts of each Twelve all lined up together.

Here is an overview of Nikki's 2012 series: 
Nikki has been busier than ever this festive season and has Stocking Stuffer Art, Treasure Tea Boxes, Mixed Media Art Quilt Kits and other goodies for sale.  Check out Nikki's Etsy Shop.

* Please e-mail Brenda  if you spot any glitches or broken links on the website.

Sweet Mosaic

I'm working on updating the website with the latest challenge works. In the meantime, here's the Sweet mosaic:

Wagashi

Wagashi are Japanese sweets and I just love them. They are sweet, of course, and so beautiful. If you've never seen any, you have to do an image search in google, and you will see how pretty they are, almost too pretty to eat!
Actually "wa" means "Japanese-style" and "kashi" means "confectionery". Together they become "wagashi".
One of the big challenges in learning Japanese is to master the writing system. I now know my hiragana and katakana pretty well. But of course I am only starting to study kanji.
Anyway, for this quilt, I decided to print some fabric with the word wagashi written in hiragana:
わがし
I tried lots of things, made many test prints, and finally settled on using only the hiragana わ (wa). By the way, "wa" means "Japanese-style", but it also means "peace" and "harmony".

The flavours and shapes of wagashi are often inspired by seasons and flowers. This is why I added this sakura on my quilt.

Merci to my sweet Twelve fellows for this fun series of 20x12 quilts!

Sugar Pie

As usual, inspiration lead me a circuitous route to this quilt. For the longest time my plan was to make a fairly literal interpretation of the theme, maybe even something pictorial. Then a week or so ago, as I struggled to find any germ of an idea that would lead me to The Quilt, I had an interesting (probably only to me!!)epiphany about how I design. Often I'm asked to explain how my inspiration evolves and I struggle to put it in words. It always starts with colour and a mood. I feel a certain way, a certain visual atmosphere starts to form. The epiphany part is that this creates a kind of design board/mood board in my head. It has snippets of lines, shapes, but mostly waves and sparkles of colour, and they all merge and float and blend into a feeling. So then I collect together fabrics that match that feeling and think about how I want them to interact. The type of interaction (is it fluid, sharp, linear, etc) informs that technique that will be needed to join them together. The whole design is never made before I start. I just choose a beginning and go for it. The process is then an organic one; things just happen and every decision is made as the need arises. Another epiphany - that's why I have so many failures and why I should probably work in series! Often a mis-step along that way will create another problem that needs correction which causes another problem, etc, etc. (I know lots of you relate to THIS!)It's a haphazard way to work that, for me, results in many more bad quilts than good ones. I usually know immediately if it's been a success or failure. One of the more difficult lessons for some artists/artisans to learn is to cull their own work; to weed out the rubbish and get rid of it. When we began this Twelve by Twelve adventure, I made a commitment to myself that I would try new things, that I would be accepting of whatever I produced and not beat myself up about stuff that sucked. There would be no culling because, for me, this was a learning, fun project. I never imagined a book! or even exhibitions! And now my good quilts and my terrible quilts share a stage with each other and with the magnificent work of my colleagues. Looking over my quilts from the three series, I would still happily burn quite a number of them. But there are also a few that I am quite proud of and they would not have happened had the bad ones not been there to learn from.

This one? This one I love! This is my Sugar Pie. The mood board for this one was sugared almonds, fondant, gelato, Marie Antoinette, frothy, lacy, twinkly. The first background that I planned was very small rectangles, stacked sort of like Chinese Coins. It wasn't gelling in my head and I realise now that that's because it would have been far to staccato. Then I took this photo of some english paper pieced hexagons that I'm making and a friend commented on how much he liked the edges (surround yourselves with artists, people!).

Now I had a background that worked - very narrow strips of highly patterned fabrics. I actually didn't know that it was a background until I had sewn it and it needed something on it! It needed frothy, blendy flowers that melted into it and emerged from it.

And now, after making 7235687265 colonial knots, I have run out of time. It still needs more embroidery and more sequins and some beads. They will have to wait until next year now. It is the sister of my first quilt for this series,Jubilee. And I think they may have more sisters waiting to be born.