Fibermania

Meet Emily Parson

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Emily Parson quilt artist, knitter, listmaker and blogger is at 38, the youngest member of the faculty of the Chicago School of Fusing. She is the responsible party for turning me onto blogging.

She is modeling her latest creation in a pose suitable for Vogue Knitting.

Emily is mother to Ethan, 6, full of energy, highly verbal and a gifted draftsman, he insists he does not knit.

Also mother to Molly, who at 4 has a tremendous fashion sense and wears many of her mother's hand knit garments, to the envy of her preschool classmates. She also does not knit. Yet.

The latest member of the family is Sophie, in her late ones, demonstrating here that walking is her next big thing.

Emily is married to Dave Greene, very late 39s, who is proving his talent for pouring the perfect head of beer to Molly, junior bartender.

I met Emily back in the mid 90's when she came to our art quilt group, PAQA. This was one of our early meetings when the crowd was very large and lots of work was being shown during our Showcase segment. It took me by surprise when she held up this quilt, Techno Pup. I almost fell out of my chair. Who is this person??? Where has she been and how did she get so good, so young???

After the meeting I approached her, to size her up and to get a better look at this work. Hmmm. She was shy, way too young, and lived in Chicago, which practically made her from outer space in my mind.

The technique she used to make this quilt, was reverse applique, she explained, which she learned in a workshop with our dear friend David Walker. (David, stop reading this right now, go away, and come back later).

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Here's how that works...Layer all the fabrics you will need in the final composition and then stitch the design outlines through all layers, and then cut away the layers until you reach the proper color, and then satin stitch the edges down to hide the rough cuts.

OMIGOD.

Being the brazen know it all that I am, I let her know she wasted tons of her beautiful fabric and time with this method, (David has retired it) and could have achieved the same effect by FUSING.

Here's what makes her the genius she is: She listened to me.

Yuh.

When will I learn to leave well enough alone? SHE IS MAJOR COMPETITION.

This detail of the dog's nose shows the meticulous quality she knew how to produce way too early in her career. O, and she hand dyed the fabrics too.

What is worse, and believe me this gets worse, is that she is a major braniac too. She has a degree in Economics (how to buy yarn on sale) from the Wharton School of Business (U of Penn)

has these three little ones and the aforementioned Big One, and manages to knit like a fiend, and make quilts that sell in the five figures and blog!

I must lie down.

Here's a cute little quilt she made, that won First Place in Applique at AQS a few years ago. It is a mere 82" square. Fused, hand dyed damask tablecloths, scored on Ebay and at garage sales, machine embroidered and machine quilted.

Her method is pretty ingenious. She pins a large white base fabric to her design wall and projects the image, or traces it from the grossly enlarged drawing (Thank you Kinko's) and then cuts the fused fabric shapes and first pins and later fuses them in place on the base. When all is constructed and fused, she satin stitch outlines the shapes, makes the sandwich and machine quilts it all. Then she photographs it, enters it in shows, and wins awards. Simple.

Did I mention she is only 38? What would it be like when the kids are all in school and she can really get something done?

I must lie down.