The Art Quilt Design Intensive workshop focuses on teaching Denise’s approach to composition, to fabric painting, and on helping her students gain a hands-on understanding of the comparative effects, strengths, benefits, and use – basically, the “what, why, when, and how” – of alternative quilt top construction and finishing techniques.
Each participant is asked to bring an enlarged quilt size photo (or large sketch) to act as a quilt or project template to help focus and personalize their compositional, fabric painting, and construction techniques instruction.
Denise’s workshops are highly interactive and very hands-on, and are focused more on the development of participant creativity, confidence, and experiential exploration and learning than on rigid, one-size-fits-all lesson plans or patterns – her goal is to teach re-useable and replicable techniques and “lessons learned” that each participant’s own creativity can confidently expand on once away from the classroom. Denise is an accomplished quilter and instructor who enthusiastically, energetically, openly, and warmly shares her knowledge, and her design and color sense, without reservation. Denise’s classes are fun.
The workshop’s format and schedule are designed to maximize opportunities for individualized and focused one-on-one teaching and student feedback.
Note that the workshop is not specifically about stones, or even landscapes, but instead on fabric painting and construction techniques capable of dramatically improving overall quilt design and composition, messaging and storytelling, color and texture, dimensionality, and craftsmanship and design integrity, regardless of quilt theme or focus.
Participants need only have basic sewing and sewing machine operating skills, plus prior (even minor) experience in quilt development.
About Denise Labadie
Denise makes contemporary art quilt portraits of megalithic Celtic “stones” and monoliths, and their landscapes, and more recent (though still centuries old) monastic ruins. She handpaints most all her own fabric, and uses varying combinations of reverse appliqué, turned edge appliqué, raw edge appliqué, insetting, free-form strip piecing (and optional couching), and “thread shadowing” (a variation on thread painting) to achieve her trademark quilt top textures, lighting, depth of field, and shadowing and perspective. Denise has been a featured exhibitor and instructor at multiple major U.S. and international venues.
Denise uses a wide variety of hand-painted fabrics, threads, trims, and twisted yarns in her work, constructing her quilts the same way as a stone mason builds a wall – individually selecting, sizing, cutting out, piecing, and appliquéing (or insetting) each stone, one by one, working from the bottom up. In contrast to the realism of her stones, her landscapes (and skies) are quite abstract.
Denise’s sewing and quilting experience and knowledge (which includes both contemporary art quilting and traditional patchwork) is both deep and wide-ranging, and she has proven to be uniquely capable of helping her students better understand and use both new and traditional (though oftentimes repurposed) fiber art and quilting techniques.
Denise creates contemporary art quilt portraits of Celtic megalithic (bronze age) stones and monoliths, and more recent (but still centuries old) monastic ruins. She handpaints most all her own fabric, and uses varying combinations of reverse applique?, turned edge applique?, raw edge applique?, inserting, free-form strip piecing, couching, and “thread shadowing” (a variation on thread painting) to achieve her trademark style.
Denise’s quilts are known for their strong emotionality and, technically, for her hand-painted fabric, her assertive textures and shadowing, her use of color and contrast, and her craftsmanship and technique precision. Viewers are also fascinated that she “builds” her quilts the same way that an actual stone mason builds a wall or structure, each stone (cut from her hand painted fabric) individually appliquéd, working from the ground up.
Denise has been a featured (solo) exhibiting artist and instructor at national exhibitions in the US, France, Italy, China, South Korea, Luxembourg, Germany, The Netherlands, and Spain. She is a multiple Quilt National (USA) award winner (both People’s Choice and the McCarthy Award for Craftsmanship.
In 2021 she will have an extended solo exhibition of her work at the U.S. National Quilt Museum (Paducah, Kentucky).
Teaching highlights include being an invited landscape and contemporary art quilting instructor at Georgia O’Keefe’s (America’s foremost landscape artist) “Ghost Ranch”, and teaching the prestigious annual Carrefour Séminar Post Carrefour masterclass – only one workshop, and workshop instructor, is selected each year – held in France at the end of each year’s annual Carrefour Européen du Patchwork (Continental Europe’s largest quilt exhibition).
Her work has also been the subject of in-depth articles in multiple French, German, Italian, South Korean, and US magazines – including Art Quilt Collector, FiberArts Magazine, and Art Quilting Studio Magazine.
Rates & Enrollment
Day Student Tuition: $910.00
Full 5-Day Package*: $2,627.85-$2,841.69
*5-Day Workshop Package includes: Tuition for 5 full class days, 6 nights of dinner, lodging, breakfast, daily cookie and fruit breaks, unlimited coffee and tea, and welcoming wine and cheese reception. Your choice between a room to yourself (single occupancy) or bring a friend and split a room (double occupancy).
Get more information about your options to enroll here.