Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts

Rayna Gillman works in mixed media on fiber, using a variety of surface design, collage, and printmaking techniques to integrate text and images into her work. She made her first scrap quilt in 1974, when she fell in love with an antique quilt she could not afford. Over the years, she began to print her own fabrics and became intrigued by the textures and design potential of such items as corrugated cardboard, construction fence, and kitchen tools. Today, using found objects from the house, the hardware store, and even the street, she paints, dyes, and discharges, working in layers to add complexity to her highly recognizable fabrics. Noted for her instinctive sense of color and her improvisational approach to design, she encourages students to work spontaneously, to experiment, and to use the question "what if?" to guide them. She has taught hundreds of students not only to print their own fabrics but also to use those fabrics creatively in their quilts. Rayna was a featured artist on the TV show Simply Quilts and has written for Quilting Arts Magazine. In addition, her work has been widely published. She was a juror for the national Art Quilts Lowell show and teaches internationally. Her fabric and quilts have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the country and are in private collections in the United States, France, and Belgium. You can see her quilts on the web at www.studio78.net and www.galleryfxv.com. She invites you to visit her blog at studio78notes.blogspot.com.