SEQUIM — Fiber artist Marla Varner will head to Phoenix, Ariz., this month for QuiltCon, the “largest modern quilting show of its kind,” according to its website.
Varner’s large quilts, “Crevices” and “Tiny Bubbles” preceeded her — two of about 600 quilts selected from thousands of entries to be displayed and judged at the convention, which also will feature lectures and workshops.
The conference will be from Feb. 16-20.
To be considered a quilt, most modern shows require there must be three layers, Varner said.
“A quilt can basically be anything that has a top and a backing and some kind of batting in the middle,” she said. “And then it’s stitched together by threads, by machine or by hand, so that are three layers.
“I build on the skills and designs of traditional quilting and create unique designs with a modern aesthetic.”
In 2020, Varner won the “Quilting Excellence” award for the quilt “For the Love of Squircles,” and in 2015 she won the same award for “Coral Reef.” She used the award money to start her business, Penny Lane Quilts in 2015. To view those quilts or learn more about her process, go to www.pennylanequilts.com, or her Instagram or Facebook pages of the same name.
Local quiltmaker Pat Oden said modern quilting — or art quilting — is improvisational.
“The big difference is that traditional quilting has set patterns … you follow patterns like following a dress pattern,” Oden said. “Most of the time (in modern quilting), they don’t use a straight edge even — instead, you do a freehand line.”
Oden said it looks more personal than machine-like, calling it a “more painterly look.”
Varner makes many baby quilts in the traditional style as well as being recognized for her hand quilting “because it is so beautiful and innovative,” Oden said.
“She’s very well-rounded as far as her abilities,” Oden said. “She uses lots of different colors of thread … you wouldn’t think the threads would make that much of an impression on the quilt, but depending on whether it’s a contrast or the same color as the fabric (or the choice of) the diameter of the thread — a thick thread versus a thin thread — lots of things go into it.”
She said those details make Varner’s quilts interesting.
Renne Emiko Brock, who met Varner through her participation in the North Olympic Fiber Arts Festival and a small business workshop series that Brock taught through the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Library, said Varner is “highly skilled and methodical in the systems that she has built her art practice on.”
“While technically her work might be called quilting due to the layers of fabric and stitching, to me it really is more like architecture without the requirement of squared edges or the physics of gravity,” Brock added. “Detailed, complex, and to code. There is a blueprint foundation that is all colors that houses a structure, and a design mission with rules and room for rebellion.”
Colorful foundation
Varner said she loves working with color. Her quilts showcase a variety of color combinations, both in the fabric choices and the thread.
Varner earned a master’s degree in education in Integrated Teaching through the Arts; she retired from teaching elementary students in Sequim in 2014 after more than 30 years.
“I’ve always been interested in the visual arts, and I used to incorporate art into the curriculum as a classroom teacher,” she said.
In 1993, Bonnie Bless-Boenish, Varner’s friend and colleague, asked her to attend a traditional quilting class in Port Angeles with her.
“We hadn’t ever used a rotary cutter or a ruler. And it ended up being really complicated piecing things,” Varner said. “But we persevered. And we got our quilt done. I took a lot of classes over the years of just learning best basic techniques and things like that.”
Varner said she started doing more abstract freehand piecing in 2011. That was the year that Oden became her mentor.
“She taught a workshop where I learned to take an improvisational approach to quilting,” Varner recalled. “She taught me freehand piecing techniques, creating unique compositions without rulers. In the summer of 2011, she also introduced me to dyeing my own fabric. We use a low-water immersion technique with fiber-reactive dyes.”
Said Oden: “She far surpassed me; she just has progressed in such a creative way. She’s also very fast when she quilts. Both her hand quilting and her machine quilting. She’s really, really efficient as well as being creative … and good with color.
“It has all gone together very well.”
Alhough COVID-19 has shut down a number of activities for Varner, she has used the time to create numerous quilts for friends, family and donations, participate in online quilting groups and to experiment with new methods of hand sewing, such as the free motion style, as well as continuing her decades-long exploration of color.
In 2021, Varner created the top layer of a temperature quilt using the data from the local WeatherUnderground station each day, as well as the quilts at the exhibition.
Varner was recently featured in the online magazine Colossal (thisiscolossal.com/2022/01/marla-varner-penny-lane-quilts), a publication that bills itself as an “international platform for contemporary art and visual expression that explores a vast range of creative disciplines.”
“She is not so focused that she’s not aware of what’s needed in the community, too,” making 80 plus masks at the beginning of the pandemic and helping friends, Oden said.
“She is marvelous. She’s just such a good person as well as being a wonderful quilter.”
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Emily Matthiessen is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her at emily.matthiessen@sequimgazette.com.
