NEWFANE-Crowell Art Gallery at Moore Free Library, 23 West St., is now featuring artwork by Julia Duke through March.
The show is a collection of 12 to 15 of the Brattleboro fabric artist’s quilts, which feature an array of patterns and color schemes in the form of quilted pieces, small quilts, and wall hangings.
“I usually start with one piece of fabric, just pull it off the shelf, and then see what goes with it. I have an idea before I start,” Duke says.
Some of her simpler pieces use as few as four fabrics, while other pieces made of strips can have up to 15.
The pieces on display include a chicken quilt, a bird quilt, a tree quilt, “a couple of traditional pattern quilts, and then some more kind of modern quilts,” Duke continues.
“For me, each piece has a different sort of mood or feeling depending on the groups of colors and the sort of theme or shapes,” she says.
Duke says she likes trying a variety of techniques. “It’s mostly about putting different fabrics and patterns together and using some kind of quilt pattern or ideas to allow that to happen,” she says. “So there’s a mix of designs.”
Stitching up loose ends
Duke learned sewing from her mother and her grandmother, and those skills probably led to begin quilting, she says.
Other parts of her quilting journey can be traced back to a mundane starting point.
“About 10 or 15 years ago, I had so much fabric that I collected, it would just [be] a way of trying something new by making bigger pieces, bigger sewn things with a bunch of colors of fabric,” Duke explains.
She learned a lot of her quilting by visuals, books, and patterns.
Duke has advice for people looking to begin quilting: “Sometimes people just pick up different [materials] and just make something. And other people like to follow a pattern and be precise,” she observes, recommending that artists start out small and get to know “someone around you to help you get started.”
She plans to create tote bags and sew clothes after this show ends.
“It fulfills [me] to make something,” Duke explains.
The Crowell Art Gallery is located within the Moore Free Library at 23 West St. in Newfane. Hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from 1 to 5 p.m., Thursday from 1 to 6 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. An opening reception will take place Saturday, March 7, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. To learn more about Duke’s artwork, visit her website.
This Arts item by Alyssa Grosso was written for The Commons.