Is This All There Is: Betty Friedan
Janice Paine-Dawes
Mountain Home, Arkansas, USA
Artist Statement
I am an artist who creates art with layers of interest and complexity by combining paint and stitch. The idea for Betty Friedan’s quilt came from my personal memories as a young married woman of the 1960s. It was an age of dawning that all women could experience some of the freedom of the flower children. We might not all have been free to dance at Woodstock, but we didn’t have to be tethered to our vacuum cleaners either. My art quilt embraces the style of flower children’s paintings on an old bus.
Woman’s Groundbreaking Accomplishment
Betty Friedan, writer, feminist and activist is best known as a co-founder of the National Organization of Women and as the author of The Feminine Mystique.
Techniques
Beginning with a piece of fabric as my canvas I sketched my design. Using textile paints or acrylic paints with textile medium, I painted the composition with a base coat of flat color. I sandwiched the top with batting and a backing, forming 3 layers in the style of a traditional quilt. It was stitched on a midarm quilting machine using a free motion quilting technique. Multiple layers of paint were finally added to the stitched work to bring out depth and to accent the texture of the stitching.
Materials
Cotton muslin, Poly cotton batting, thread, textile paint.