Daren Redman

A maker of quilted wall art and textiles for the past 11 years, Daren Redman’s art quilts have incorporated the bright colors of chartreuse, yellows and red that she enjoys in Brown County throughout the year.

Recent art quilts also incorporate her travels to Tuscany and Spain, photography of sculptures, trees and flowers, and her self-portraits.

To best capture the color, Daren starts by taking photographs for inspiration. She then designs, hand dyes, paints and pole wraps her own fabrics. Working in her studio barn, Daren also uses the Japanese Shibori technique to tie, clamp and resist the fabric through an immersion dye process to create patterns. Finally, she cuts and sews the fabric pieces together for the finished wall hanging.

After all those processes, she tries to keep the final quilting simple. “The quilt lines calm the boisterous piecing, and do not distract from the colors in the cotton,” she says.

Several generations of Daren’s Louisville-based family encouraged her at a young age in the needle arts of embroidery, quilting, clothing and knitting. She sewed most of her own clothes and made her first traditional baby quilts in 1995 before discovering art quilts at a Nancy Crow workshop.

“Art quilting can be an intense and emotional process. You have to focus for 5 to 6 hours at a time without stopping, sometimes up to 10 hours,” she says.

Daren is ready to take her art to the next professional level and gain more name recognition as an Indiana Artisan. She is a member of the Studio Art Quilter’s Alliance, Art Alliance Brown County and the American Quilter’s Society.