It's Day 10 of our Winter Quilts Series! Most of our focus has been on pieced or appliqued snowflakes, but today's feature is about art quilting. Sue Andrus is a fabric artist whose works are inspired by flowers, gardens and nature. She creates pieces ranging from tiny quilted and beaded pins, to postcards, small quilts for framing, and larger wall hangings. She explains: "My quilts are like any piece of fine art, I just use a different medium. Instead of watercolors or oils, I use fabrics, fibers, and other things along with paints to create my pieces." We are fascinated by her Frosty Window.
Frosty Window, 16 x 20", by Sue Andrus at
Andrus Gardens Quilts
Sue Andrus explains this wonderful piece, which includes many elements of surface design: "I wanted this to represent a very cold snowstorm as seen through a frosty window. I used a fabric painted deep shimmery blue with sunprints of tiny star confetti and sea salt patterning that I thought looked like snow falling at night when I painted it. I had 2 pieces of a commercial print in white and pale blue with silver metallic enhanced leaves. I cut out the fabric to form the edges of frost on a window. I also added some shredded Mylar that I had for more shimmery frost. Snowflakes were cut out from Organza backed with Wonder Under, then fused to the quilt. Quilting in silver metallic thread, and beading in the snowflakes and between the flakes and quilting were also added."
Here is a detail photo showing the beading on one of the snowflakes, and scattered between the quilting lines. It also shows the fabric used to give the look of the frost around the edges of the window.
All of Sue Andrus' quilts are of her own designs. You can find her beautiful
art quilts,
gift items,
hand printed fabrics and more at
Andrus Gardens Designs at Artfire.
Image credit: Images are shown with the generous permission of Sue Andrus. For more information, please visit the
Andrus Gardens Quilts website, and for works in progress and inspiration see Sue's blog,
My Quilted Gardens.
