Karin Täuber

Biography

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Karin’s artwork has traveled around the US, through Europe and Taiwan and can be found in private collections.

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She has been quilting since her late twenties and has created quilts in all sizes, colors, techniques, and shapes. Karin often relies on her own photographs and impressions from her travels as inspiration for her work.

Her award-winning work has been exhibited at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah and the Virginia Quilt Museum; it has also traveled around the world including Taiwan.

 

Karin has a degree in Early Childhood Education and an international Montessori diploma.

She grew up near Munich, Germany and started quilting following her family's move to Boston, MA. After the family's relocation to Oxford, Great Britain, Karin began teaching for local guilds. Two years later the family moved back to Munich where Karin founded the Hachinger Quilt Festival, an annual outdoor event with a large quilt exhibit and vendors. Teaching, quilting, and traveling kept Karin busy for the next few years.

 

Karin and her family finally settled in Blacksburg, Virginia and soon afterwards, she founded the Blue Ridge Quilt Festival, a four-day trade show that took place for the last time in the summer of 2014 in Blacksburg.

Since 2013, Karin writes the monthly e-newsletter SWVA Quilt News announcing quilt related activities and events in Southwest Virginia and surrounding states.

If you are interested, you can sign up at http://kutauber.wix.com/swvaquiltnews  

 

Karin finds her greatest joy in designing and creating her art quilts as well as sharing her techniques with students in workshops that have taken her to four countries on two continents. Her goal as a workshop leader is to help each student find the key to his/her personal creative style.

 

Ever since she moved to Blacksburg, Karin has been active in several local guilds as board member and guild president.

 

Artist statement :

 

"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 sends me off on a new adventure and broadens my abilities. My quilts are an expression of this journey; sometimes they are carefully planned, organized, colorful, and complicated, but other times they are just happy accidents.

 

I start most art quilts by using traditional quilting techniques such as conventional blocks, exact seam allowances, mitered borders and hand applique. Next, I combine them with more free-form techniques such as raw edge machine applique; extensive machine embroidery and thread-work; and overlays of tulle and organza for shading and depth. Free-motion machine quilting enhances the design and beading adds sparkle and detail to the work.

 

I sometimes wake up during the night with ideas about quilts or solutions to new techniques I am 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.