Brainstorming Fabric Books

I ran a workshop for the Contemporary Quilt Group today on display methods for bits and pieces of textiles - samples, exchanged blocks, journal quilts, ATCs, all the stuff that gets stuffed into a plastic bag and shoved in a cupboard.

While there are lots of different ways the question of displaying textile pieces can be approached I decided to focus on using the structure of a book as a vehicle. (This was the impetus for my Aries book. I had to have a finished sample, and I had had those blocks for 5 years!)

I had lots of books and magazines to help stimulate ideas. I supplied all materials and equipment and obviously thought of almost everything - but one group wanted (not available) plasticine :(

The members were divided into 3 groups and each group was given a couple of sheets of butcher paper on which to write brainstormed ideas. Here are some of the results.

Liz came up with some great ideas.

Then each group was asked to make a model of the display method they had chosen. It is interesting that two groups chose skewers (perhaps influenced by the Aries book?) but their solutions were quite different. The models were made from paper so they had to consider how different the end result would be if fabric were used instead.

This group decided to make an interesting basic structure on which the pieces of textile work could be displayed.


This group used a similar idea, but focused on interesting connections.

The third group decided that there needed to be room for expansion, so additional "pages" could be added.


I think the workshop was very successful and helped spark ideas for the future.