Tag: Vendor Profile

  • Meet ASCB Vendor Sammi Nguyen of Group Hug Quilts

    I’m Sammi Nguyen, the hands and brains of a little operation called Group Hug Quilts. My working process is not always the most photogenic, what with piles of fabric scraps towering ever higher around me and loose threads always getting caught in my hair and stuck to my socks, but I’ve cleaned up my act for a few photos to show you how I make a baby quilt.

    Image1 Sketch
    For my baby quilts, I most often take my inspiration from animals. I sketch critters in my sketchbook, until I alight on one in just the right attitude for the quilt of the moment. (The rest of this post shows me making an elephant quilt, but this cat sketch was nicer than the elephant sketch.)

    Image 2 Fabric
    My studio is filled with overflowing shelves of fabric, which I source from all four corners of the earth, but especially from New York’s fabric district, which is a short trip by subway from where I live and work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Fabrics are an additional source of inspiration, whether they are solid or patterned, new or vintage. I work almost exclusively with natural fibers like linen, silk, denim, and cotton, with the exception of the occasional too-intriguing-to-pass-up piece of vintage polyester.

    Choose Fabric 2
    After I have chosen a charming member of the animal kingdom, I comb through my fabrics until I settle on a basic color scheme and textures. For this elephant quilt, I chose a muted orange linen for the quilt top and an oatmeal linen for the back and border, feeling that they suggested a dusty savannah environment that would be a suitable home for a leathery pachyderm.

    Cutting
    The subtlety of an animal’s shape makes a huge difference to the finished piece, and it often takes a while to get the drawing of the quilt’s subject just right, even if it is a fairly simple silhouette. From the finished drawing, I make pattern pieces out of tracing paper and trace and cut each piece individually, which leads to a lot of subtle variation from quilt to quilt.

    Arranging
    While I usually start with a picture in my head and a small thumbnail sketch on paper, each piece really takes shape directly in fabric. This allows me to experiment with the composition of the quilt top and see things closer to how they will look in finished form. During this part of the process, there is a lot of cutting, arranging, pinning, adding bits that don’t work to the scrap bin, resizing, shifting, and more cutting, rearranging, and pinning. It always creates a glorious mess on my studio floor.

    Sammi Sewing
    Once the composition of the quilt top is finalized, it’s time to sew all the pieces together. I still do all of my sewing on the Viking sewing machine my parents so generously gave to their wannabe fashion designer daughter on her twelfth birthday. This machine is a workhorse, and hasn’t let me down yet, despite all the weird, bulky piles of fabric I send under its needle.

    Sewing
    For all of my pictorial pieces, I use a satin stitch, a heavy back and forth stitch that traps and sews down the raw edges of each piece of fabric and adds an important design element in the form of colored outlines. When I first started sewing this way, my work was painfully slow and pretty clunky, with lots of missed stitches and bunched fabrics, but after many years of practice, my stitch work has gotten finer and finer. The technique allows me to forego traditional piecing and applique styles for a more spontaneous collage-like approach to image-making.

    Finished
    When a quilt top is finished, I sandwich it with cotton batting and a solid piece of fabric for backing. To join all three layers together, I quilt freehand on my industrial quilting machine, which lets me move fabric freely underneath the needle, kind of like drawing but in reverse. Being a free-spirited lady, I don’t draw my quilting patterns beforehand; I choose a simple motif, like a flower or a star, and just start sewing, creating a satisfying but not too uniform quilted texture. After quilting, I finish the edges, trim off extra threads, and hand-stitch my initials in the corner.

    Baby on Quilt
    I know you can’t see the finished quilt very well in this picture, but you can see my beautiful baby nephew enjoying it, and I figured including it in this post wouldn’t hurt my chances of luring you to come see me at Booth #17 at the Bazaar.

  • Meet ASCB Vendor Faryn Davis of Fernworks

    Faryn

    Hello my name is Faryn and my little biz is called Fernworks. I grew up on a farm in western North Carolina and I spent many afternoons there collecting little odds and ends that I found on our land like bird nests, feathers, interesting clumps of dirt, moss, leaves, bones, fur, twigs, bugs, and other tiny things. I continue that tradition of collecting and gathering in my paintings and line of resin jewelry today.

    Group

    My mixed media paintings and jewelry combine hand painted scenes and found natural ephemera into layers of polished resin. Each piece is painted with toothpicks and tiny brushes, embedded in multiple layers of resin, then cut and polished into delicate, dreamlike 3-D landscapes populated by plants, birds, bears, foxes and other woodland creatures.

    bird nest Rings

    My studio is a modified 8’x8’ garden hut in our backyard. This is where I paint, pour resin, and store all my many boxes and jars of found objects.

    studio 2

    Here are a few pics of me making some new resin rings. I embed little found objects or tiny hand painted scenes into silver settings and then layer resin on top. I then polish and sand each piece by hand on my tabletop sander. (A really dusty, messy process.)

    Bees in progress
    Pouring

    You can find me and my creations at galleries, shops, and craft shows all over the US. I’m always on the go. I recently returned to live in Asheville, NC with my husband and 5 year old son after an 8 year hiatus in the Pacific Northwest.

    Feather Necklace Ring
    This is my first time showing at the Art Star Craft Bazaar and I’m so excited! I’ll have tons of new necklaces, earrings, rings, cufflinks, little paintings and more! Please come say hi at booth #30.

  • Meet New ASCB Vendor Daniel Knoll and His Company, My Audio Tree

     

    My Audio Tree Logo
    80% of the worlds forests are already gone. Audio Tree is trying to change that by planting a tree for every product sold. “Play One! Plant One!”

    My Audio Tree PortraitAudio Tree founder Daniel Knoll creates handmade wood products for smartphones and tablets, most notably the signature Iphone acoustic amplifier/docking station. He has over 15 years of woodworking and sound engineering experience which led to the development of Audio Tree LLC.

    My Audio Tree Product1These speakers have been tested in a professional recording studio and proven to double the sound of your phone’s speaker using “passive amplification” meaning there are no electronics involved. Some have been designed to allow you to charge your phone by running your own charger through the speaker.

    My Audio Tree Product Dtl

    Hand selecting exotic woods, and tone-woods, carefully monitoring the moisture content and density are just some of the examples of the attention to detail that is put into every piece.  Daniel uses age-old woodworking techniques along with modern day trade secrets. He has even had to have custom made tools in order to create some of his designs.

    My Audio Tree Product2For the first time Audio Tree will be at the Art Star Craft Bazaar early next month! Stop by the booth (#13)  to see these pieces in person and find out more about Audio Tree and “Play One! Plant One!” You can also visit www.myaudiotree.com if you just can’t wait to see more!

     

  • Meet Art Star Craft Bazaar Vendor Jamie Langhoff of Seeing in Fabric!

    Pic 1

    What, at first, appear to be paintings, are actually sewn fabric art.

    Self-taught artist, Jamie Langhoff, creates vibrant urban scenes with just fabric, thread, scissors, and a 1968 Singer sewing machine. Finished artwork is mounted onto ready-to-hang canvas panels.

    Each scene features many dozens of tiny hand-cut fabric pieces. Creating these scenes requires a slow and careful building of many pieces of fabrics, and many layers. All of the fabrics she uses in her artwork are recycled–scrap, remnants and re-purposed clothing. Many of the fabrics Jamie uses are donated to her by her lovely fans.

    Pic 2

    Threadwork and stitching techniques are central to the realism and painterly aspects of Seeing in Fabric. Eschewing the dazzling digital age of newer sewing machines, Jamie enjoys the reliability and rustic sturdiness of her vintage 1968 Singer.

    Pic 3

    By using a color palette of thread in over 200 different colors, but just 2 basic stitch types–straight stitch and zigzag–Jamie creates a multitude of “shading”, “brushstroke” and “drawing” effects. Her stitching technique involves a free-flowing and rapid style, requiring an extreme amount of concentration and skill, but also trust and confidence in her sewing machine.

    Pic 4

    As a self-taught artist, Jamie constantly pushes herself to experiment with her techniques. Through her artwork she shows the world how to “see in fabric” in order to see the vibrant and strange beauty in our modern urban world.

    Pic 5Jamie will be be traveling from Washington, DC to join us at our 12th Annual Spring Art Star Craft Bazaar at Penn’s Landing Great Plaza on May 9th + 10th.  Make sure to stop by her booth #101 to see these incredible pieces in person.  These photos are so beautiful but the pieces are even better in person.  Visit her Etsy Page for more!

    Pic 6

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