Tara Faughnan Lecture Notes

Tara Faughnan came to the guild on Saturday and gave a lecture.

Tara was a gardener before she began quiltmaking. she works at Michael Miller after completeing at textile design program in Berkeley.

She uses Photoshop and Illustrator in her work. She had a Pfaff for a long time, but recently got a Janome. She uses her mom's machines when she wants to do something special.

Tara started out with Ruby McKim's 101 Patchwork Patterns. She also pored over back issues of Quilters' Newsletter Magazine to learn. She did not have a good internet connection at the time, so searching the web was not an option. She used templates to make her first quilt.

Her third quilt was an art quilt with a dragon on it. It was quilted with metallic threads and she decided that it would be her last representational quilt. This quilt is not shown on her website.

At some point, a clerk at Joann told her about rotary cutting.

Initially Tara was terrified of color. She took two colors and made one little block to kind of deal with color combinations. As a result, she got really excited about color combinations. Tara works, primarily, with solids since she works with prints all day long. She finds that dark colors help other bright colors pop. She likes the place where two colors meet and wants to continue to explore / figure out the fluidity of color. She finds that brown bridges the gap between green and purple.

She now makes iterations of quilts. She likes to take one block and see where it can go. Alexandra's Quilt is a grief quilt. The next quilt had many more neutrals, which are her safety net.

Tara doesn't like improv cutting or piecing, but likes improv layout. She always designs on the wall - (using a design wall). She ends up with a lot of extra blocks, extra shards , extra leftovers when she makes a quilt.

Her DWR quilt was inspired by the Roderick Kiracofe Unconventional Quilts Show held in Sonoma. It is hand pieced and it made her feel like she hit her stride in 2015-2016-2017. She began to feel like color was her focus.

She made one DWR quilt that was just like one she saw. She thinks you should make what you like and that you can learn a lot from making derivative quilts. There is a blog post on the MQG site about derivative quilts [your editor was not able to find it quickly, but will find it later and link  to it]

The Pine Burr quilt was a huge step in the direction of figuring out how colors flow together.

Tara loves discord in quilts - things that are unexpected that can't be resolved. She gets a lot of inspiration from the Quilt Complex.

The Easter Egg quilt (not its real name) had an Easter Egg color palette. She added neutrals, greys, browns and ochres to make it more palatable - less sweet.

Quilts have hard lines and we just have to deal with that.

She does not make garments

She works on one quilt at a time.

She doesn't get stuck. She just makes a decision and sticks with it. She thinks she will get stuck on a  quilt if she doesn't finish it.

She will be a QuiltCon judge in 2017. Quiltcon judges are not required to be NCQC certified. She doesn't think that quilts made from patterns should be entered into shows alongside original works, but that there should be a separate category for quilts made from patterns.

Tara will be teaching a workshop for the guild on 8/12.