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Swiss-American quilter and her autobiographical works

Sylvia Einstein was born and educated in Switzerland and came to the USA in l965. In l975 she made her first quilt and have since exhibited widely in the USA and Europe, her quilts have also been in Japan and South America. Sylvia has been teaching for more than 15 years and since l988 she has been invited to teach in Europe every year. In l996 she had a successful one person show in Switzerland. Her work is published in many magazines, catalogues and books in several languages.

Midsummer Spell, 2001 (10 x 14")

Sylvia made this quilt for a French exhibit called "Artextures", which is on exhibit in Gif Sur Yvette, near Paris, in november 2001. It was organized by Danielle Hsiung and Elisabeth Gevrey. She took a number of unusual fabrics, mostly silks, that she layered. She added some matches with gold heads and lightly stitched the whole composition.

Baghdad Burning, 1991 (47 x 46")

This quilt was made during the gulf war. Sylvia was horrified at the war and saddened that this "victory" made so many people feel good about the USA. (She feels the same way about the current war.) She also felt manipulated by the government and the press, protest was not heard and the whole war was covered as if it were a computer game, there was no mention of all the dead people and the devastation of the country, there was mostly glee and cheering at another hit.

Midnight Syllables, l999 (48 x 72")

In l998 Sylvia was invited to a Fibre Artists Symposium at the Tyrone Guthrie Arts Center at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland. Because she could not take all her fabric she made many collages during this exciting time. Midnight Syllables is the first quilt based on one of these collages. She first crazy pieced the red background and then inserted the light runes. Sylvia loves the unexpected discoveries in crazy piecing, a technique which you can never quite control. The time in Ireland was enriched by the dialog with the other artists from all over Europe. The ancient history of Ireland was ever present in this fascinating land.

Johannisnacht,  2001 (28 x 52")

Inspired by a print of red poppies with black, irregular stems by the artist Klaus Fuchsmann, Sylvia chose the red Marimekko fabric as a background and inserted lines into the three panels. What interests her currently are parallel lines, preferably irregular, which cannot easily be pieced. The vivid Marimekko fabric from the sixties, with printed stripes, gave rhythm to the pieced lines. The hand dyed fabric (Heide Stoll-Weber) and the commercially printed fabric made a perfect border around the three panels. The quilt was made for an invitational show in Germany, organized by Elke Krusemark-Camin and Dörte Bach, where the quilters had to chose a print and be inspired by that print. The title comes from the fires of "Johannisnacht" or summer solstice, that is celebrated with bonfires in Norway. Sylvia remembers the celebration fondly.

Early Snow, l998 (48 x 67")

This quilt was pieced like a logcabin with printed materials to create a path through a wood, there is early snow on the ground but the leaves are still on some trees. Sylvia used many unusual prints in browns, greens and white to give that dappled effect of light penetrating the canopy of trees. She laid out the quilt on her design wall, all the strips hanging down, but piecing was very difficult, every time she seamed two pieces together the proportions changed and she had to adjust the scene. Sylvia is a fan of Ruth McDowell and was inspired by her book on piecing, which contains several woodscenes. She could not imagine cutting all those templates and was looking for a different way to achieve the same effect. It was not easy.

More about Sylvia Einstein

Sylvia has always loved textiles and in l968 and later she took a lot of classes in textile techniques but not quilting. She discovered quilting by chance and made her first quilt in l975.  That quilt and "Carnival" is actually in Oslo, at a friend's house. Then she took some quilting classes. Sylvia does not have a formal art background, but Boston is rich in good classes and she took many, not only in quilting, but design, color and art history. She loves the work of Matisse and Paul Klee and she admires the Abstract Expressionists. One of the best books she has read on art and art making is Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Both are artists and the book is a no-nonsense, sensible approach to art making. It is also readable and small.

Sylvia subscribe to Fiberarts, Surface Design and Textilforum (German) to go outside the quilt world. She is a member of the Swiss, French and German quilt guilds and love their magazines. She reads art magazines too and go to exhibits. Sylvia is lucky because in Boston there are many contemporary quilters. She's in two critique groups which meet once a month to discuss each other's work. They share information on shows, to see and to enter, articles, ideas and books. Sylvia is also in the Quilter's Connection (www.quiltersconnection.org), a lively group of about 300 and they often have good speakers. They also have a wonderful show once a year in May. Through Sylvia's teaching she has met many other wonderful quilters, in the USA and Europe, and have often had intense discussions on the work that they do. This and the critique groups are what keeps her going.

About quilting

Quilting is for Sylvia a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. Most of her quilts are autobiographical, the images reactions to events that touch her life. She likes arranging scraps, found materials of someone else's design, into a new form. She loves printed, eccentric fabric from all sources. Sylvia often sews collages of disparate patterned fabrics called crazy quilts. She pursues chance encounters of lines and colors and out of this dialogue with the material comes the finished quilt. Quilts have a long history and a language of their own. Old patterns are full of meaning. Exploring these patterns connects her to women through the ages and yet my quilts are an expression of the late 20th century. Sylvia is joining the many women who have written their diaries in cloth.