Lectures

Making it Your Own  (NEW!)

•Bedouin cross stitch embroidery

•Copper plate etching  

•Japanese Shibori

•Embroidery from the West Bengal region of India

How can you use these varied techniques and still have your work seem like your own.   Quilter and artist Julia E. Pfaff will outline how her work has grown to a sophisticated art form incorporating traditions from quilting, western art, and ethnic textile production. Process not only informs, but is an integral part of the development of Pfaff=s work. Revel in a journey that will take you from the temples of Greece to a fabric printing studio at Virginia Commonwealth University.   

What Place is This? Archaeologically Inspired Quilts
Julia E. Pfaff will show slides illustrating her twenty years of working as an archaeological technical artist in Greece, Egypt and Jordan.  She will explain how this work has influenced quilts, how her work as an artist working in the quilt medium has grown and matured and in what new directions she hopes to move.  She will discuss the techniques and processes she uses in her quilts, crazy piecing, applique, foundation quilting, fabric dyeing and print making.  As an added bonus Pfaff will share with us insights into the trials and tribulations of doing commissioned art, showing slides of her recent five panel quilt done for Media General Corporate head offices in Richmond.

Do I Do My Own Sewing?

Inspired by the question, Ado I do my own sewing?@, this slide lecture focuses on the importance of process and materials in the quilt work of Julia E. Pfaff.  The artist will outline the development of her quilts from a family tradition through her archaeologically inspired quilts to her most recent work. She will discuss the techniques she uses including fabric dyeing, painting, printmaking, applique, and crazy piecing and how she integrates her creative processes into her studio and home life.

Finding Your Inner Artist

What makes an art quilt? What makes art?  The all important question we should be asking ourselves is what makes good art? Artist, quilter, and educator Julia E. Pfaff will discuss aspects of making art, making art in a quilt format, and observations of the art quilt movement.  She will lend insights into her creative process and discuss how can we edit better and have the confidence to express your own ideas and use fabric in a way your mother would not have approved of.  

My Art - My Craft

A slide lecture outlining the history and recent developments in the fiber work of Julia E. Pfaff.  The artist will talk about the importance of personal history and process in the making of art.  Pfaff will show the growth of her work from a family tradition of quilting to significant pieces of narrative art held in major corporate collections.  She will explore the importance of print making techniques and painting in her most current work as well as a shift from her well known archaeological theme to those of a more home-grown nature.