HandMade At The Lake - About Us
When I opened my gallery five years ago, I realized I had fulfilled a dream of many artists - to have a year round avenue to sell my work. Other than North Tahoe Arts in Tahoe City, there was no other gallery on the North Shore selling art works exclusively made by local artists. I believe when people visit the Lake, they want to take home a "piece of Tahoe" that is made at Tahoe - not imported from abroad. Handmade At The Lake is the place to truly find that unique piece of art, jewelry or gift that says "Lake Tahoe".
In order to best represent the artwork shown in the gallery, I make a point to know my artists, talk to them about their work, and be familiar with their artistic process. Many of their pieces have found a special spot in my home! I strive to bring the best artists at the Lake to show their work at the gallery.
Below is the process I go through when creating my fabric art quilts. You can see how Lake Tahoe inspires my creativity!
The Artistic Process
My quilts are like pieces of art using fabric instead of a paintbrush. Drawing from thousands of fabrics cut into two inch squares, each quilt is hand designed on a white mat. I use four squares to represent a flower, or several squares in a row to impersonate a flower bed. Some of my quilts are laid out to create a color flow from pink to purple to blue to yellow to orange that is more abstract than an imitation of an image. Most of my quilts are reminiscent of Monet paintings, represented as an impressionistic garden or blend of colors.
Once the design is finished, I number each row and pick the squares up in a pile. They are then sewn on the machine vertically first to create strips and then horizontally to complete the inside of the piece. Then comes the hard part choosing a border. The border can make or break a piece and with so many colors working inside each design, the border fabric can draw out any of the colors from the quilt. I sometimes split the borders to pull out two different colors, or for example in my garden scenes, I will use a blue color at the top of the piece to represent sky and a green at the bottom to represent grass or a meadow. I try to use a strong color for the binding of the quilt, the strip that holds all the inner pieces together, to create a frame around the piece.
The quilting lines sewn on the piece add one more creative element to the image. For example, in the garden scene quilts, I try to use light images in one upper corner and quilt diagonal lines in a light yellow thread to represent the sun shining down. On other designs, I will quilt vertical wavy lines down the quilt to draw the viewer's eye down the piece. Some pieces have very little quilting as the additional thread will take away from the overall image of the quilt.
Each piece is different and has it's own unique personality. I hope you enjoy browsing through my quilts as much as I enjoyed making them!
Inspiration
Although my art form is a traditional medium quilting and goes back for centuries, my impressionistic quilts take on a different flavor than those of our ancestors. Each piece is functional whether a table quilt, pillow, wall piece, or lap quilt and my unique twist of using color instead of complicated quilt patterns make my pieces stand apart visually from more traditional quilts.
Using 2" squares and hundreds of different fabrics, my watercolor garden and floral quilts are reminiscent of Monet's paintings. Each piece is one of a kind and hand designed to create a colorful landscape garden. To add a touch of whimsy, the sky portion of the quilt transitions from light colors in the upper right hand corner representing daylight to dark blues in the upper left hand corner to represent night. Don't be surprised if you see birdhouses, ladybugs, butterflies or other creatures hidden among the squares. These pieces can be custom ordered to any size.
Fabric provides a wonderful medium to create subtle shading in my quilts. Playing with the fabric colors allow my pieces to transition through the entire color wheel, providing a unique bold landscape or abstract picture. I use simple squares and triangles when creating my quilts so I can focus on the artistic elements of the quilt versus the intricacies of the patterns. It is the play with the colors that fascinates me and gives my quilts their individuality.
This design method has also been used for larger lap quilts, pillows and table runners. My pinecone ornaments are folded fabric in the shape of a pinecone representing all the four seasons.
Nature is my inspiration, fabric is my medium, and my quilts are an interpretation of God's landscape. Quilting is also a way that I've found to bring a bit of nature indoors and quilts are a versatile and useful art form!
Custom orders are accepted.
Call Karen today to speak to Karen about having a custom quilt made
(775) 833-0637