She enjoys making creations with texture, dimension. Her largest hand-made quilt measured nearly 8-feet square.
Quilter Barbara Stroup views her craft as more than just sewing together fabric shapes to create a bedspread.
Instead, the Springfield resident for years has been making quilts that can hang on walls as pieces of art. She enjoys the processes of using thread to create designs and patterns within the quilts, and playing with a variety of fabrics to add texture and dimension.
“Fabric is an inspiration because there’s so much available now for fabulous patterns in scale and colors,” she said.
These days Stroup teaches quilting, creates one-of-a-kind pieces, helps other quilters finish their projects from her home studio, and also sells her quilts twice a year at craft fairs. Quilting for her is “less of a hobby and more of a passion,” she said.
Stroup was introduced to quilting more than 15 years ago, when she saw a traditional quilt at a quilting store in New Hampshire, and decided to educate herself about the craft. She learned from her mother how to sew on a treadle sewing machine when she was a young girl, so segueing to quilting was made easier, she said.
At her home, Stroup uses a sewing machine that moves up and down the length of a 14-foot table, known as longarm quilting equipment, to allow her to sew together the top, batting and backing of any size quilts for her clients. While her students enjoy the process of picking out fabric and putting together different patterns, they leave the finish work of piecing the three layers together to Stroup, in part because they often don’t have large enough equipment to handle it, she said.
“Putting the three pieces together can still be artistic for me. When you quilt and make these layers stay together like that, you’re composing a pattern of sorts on top of this quilt, which shows up as texture, or as color depending on the thread you use,” she said.
When designing her own quilts, Stroup said she is inspired by nature, such as a quilt she made of trees covered in brightly colored fall leaves. Much of her larger works explore straight and angled lines, and she also ventures into curves and circles.
Some of her smaller works are linked to quotes and readings, which she designs using a pen, paint, stamping or stenciling. The largest quilt she ever created was 95-inches-by-95 inches. That is, almost 8-feet square.
One technique that Stroup uses in her quilt making is called a fabric collage, which means she would adhere pieces of a fabric to a background, instead of seaming pieces together to create a design. One such collage she made is of a fish underwater, in which the fabric for the raw edges of the fin, for example, give it dimension.
Another technique she likes is called thread painting, in which the thread is not only functional for holding the layers of the quilt together, but it can also bring attention to a design, such as gold thread used as the gills of the fish example.
“When the thread begins to be a design element it takes on more meaning, and helps define the object,” Stroup said.
For Stroup, being creative with colors and choosing fabrics are what she enjoys most about quilting.
“Doing those things are always fun. Probably more fun than the actual mechanics,” she said.