Texas ceramist and quilt designer SUSAN CRANSHAW started quilting in 2002 after an extended illness interrupted a 25 year career as a renowned ceramist in both the United States and Mexico. Applying her unerring sense of color and design to a new medium gave Susan a chance to create stunning, award-winning fabric mosaics that draw crowds wherever they are shown.
In her home studio, Susan surrounds herself with colorful textiles, baskets of thread, and line drawings for quilts still floating around in her imagination. She usually has several quilts in progress at once and works on each as inspiration strikes. Her signature stitching style 
uses tiny, intricate patterns sewn with contrasting threads over a variety of mix-and-match fabrics. She loves bold, high-impact color combinations and continuous lines of free-motion machine quilting.
Cranshaw also publishes quilt patterns and teaches others how to execute the techniques that distinguish her work at various arts organizations and shows. Among her award-winning designs is “Prickly Pear Cactus Blossoms” (above left) and “Road Runner and Horned Toads” (to the right). She is a spokesperson for Aurifil Thread Company, under the auspices of the Bigfork Bay Cotton Company, Ltd, as part of their Designer Endorsement Program. Aurifil displays her quilts at trade shows and promotes her “Desert Series” patterns. About her work, Susan says:The reason I choose to work with textiles, as opposed to painting, is that there are so many different patterns and colors of fabrics to explore . . . If I were a painter, I would want to paint all of those wonderful spots, dots, and squiggles, into my pictures. The whole quilt is a kind of jigsaw puzzle. The fun of quilting is solving the puzzle—visualizing how each simple piece relates to one another in order to produce stimulating textile art.
For more about Susan Cranshaw and her quilts, classes, and patterns: http://www.susancranshaw.com/
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Fabrics create heirlooms . . . the fine art of Susan Cranshaw
-- Rosemary Carstens
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6 comments:
Love it, beautiful work!
WOW! I wouldn't have known they were quilt. Thought they were paintings.
Me neither Jerrie - these are beautiful quilt designs. It must take hours of work to complete.
Exquisite timing for this post. The Denver Center Theater Company is putting on 'Quilters' from May 22 thru July 11. That play is set in the pioneer West. Last year, the DCTC presented "Gee's Bend," a play about impoverished African-American women in a small town in the segregated South -- and their daughters and granddaughters in a more enlightened time. Quilts spanned the generations.
Rosemary,
This woman's work is stunning. It is wonderful to see that the art of quilting has not died with my grandmother's generation. Creative expression can take many forms and I love it when art and functionality reside in the same bed.
Melanie
I love these. Textile art is fantastic offering such diversity and depth. It makes me yearn to get out my needles and thread.
All good wishes!!
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