Artist statement:

Karin Täuber, Blacksburg, Virginia

"My international background inspires my quilting and helped me create a fascinating array of modern landscape art quilts as well as a large collection of traditional quilts. I have always loved color and fiber.  Painting with thread and making art quilts bring together these passions in exciting and satisfying ways.

I have found that every time I try something different it just sends me off on a new adventure and broadens my abilities. My quilts are an expression of that journey, sometimes carefully planned, organized, colorful, and complicated, and other times they are just happy accidents. 

I start most art quilts by using traditional quilting techniques such as traditional blocks, exact seam allowances, mitered borders and hand appliqué, and combine them with the more free form “art” techniques of raw edge machine appliqué, extensive machine embroidery and thread-work, as well as overlays of tulle and organza for shading and depth. Each art quilt is completed using free-motion machine quilting to enhance the design and beading to add sparkle and increase the dimension in the work. I get so caught up in the creative process that I sometimes wake up during the night with ideas about quilts or solutions to new techniques I'm currently exploring.

In the quilting world, there are “traditional quilters”, and free-form “art quilters”;

I like to describe myself as a “traditional art quilter.”"