It’s the final post because it’s time to move on, maybe moan about the first week of school where my classroom was 83 degrees. Whose idea is it to begin school in the middle of August, anyway? Okay, enough moaning. Here is the final set of quilts.
I wrote some time ago about the Masters Books, and my lucky day arrived, for they had sample albums related to the published works. The quilts could jump off the page and I could touch and see and figure out how they did things.
Alice Beasley’s wonderful portrait.
On the left, are some pieces of fabric that Beasley used, and on the right, Beatrice Lanter’s sample.
There’s my thumb on her sample, just so you can appreciate the scale. Teensy-weensy little squares.
This sample on the right is from my favorites: Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade. If this post weren’t so photo-heavy, I’d paste in some more of their work, but use the link above to the Masters Book to see more.
ConText, by Pat Kroth
I keep thinking that little white strip of text looks like the flag in a Hershey’s kiss candy. Maybe it was time to break for lunch, which I did. While eating a (lame) salad (the food at the convention center is in dire need of an overhaul!), I received a text that my son had gotten a job! So the title of this quilt, based on the idea of texting, had resonance for me.
Ladybug Garden, by Collen Harvey in the Hoffman Challenge series of quilts.
Detail of the quilting and fabric use.
This quilt is from where my mind was feeble and I completely forgot to get info about it. If anyone knows, leave a comment and I’ll update. It’s a shame not to acknowledge such an interesting quilt. Please forgive.
My Friends Made Me Do It, AKA Starlight Garden, by Betty Brister
She has great friends, if this is the result. Detail below.
In her artist’s statement, it comments on the supple stems and perfect circles. Here’s a detail version of those.
M. C. Bunte was driving across the Indiana countryside during an approaching storm. As she watched, a shaft of sun lit up a small church and the surrounding trees. In this quilt, Shelter in the Time of Storm, she felt it was a message that even when “situations appear threatening, hope — God’s protection for the spirit — exists.”
She had quilted what looks like text into the fields of crops, but I can’t decipher what it says.
Pamela Druhen created this exquisite small quilt that just pulled me in like some of the larger, showier quilts can not. She used the techniques of dye-painting, free-motion embroidery and free motion quilting to create Vas-Y, which according to her artist’s statement means “Let’s go!” in French (since it is a French bicycle).
Detail of Vas-Y.
This quilt, titled Totally Insane, is from the Nearly Insane book by Liz Lois. The maker, Loretta Duffy, wanted to recreate the 1879 Salinda Rupp quilt that, according to her artist’s statement, is composed of 98 blocks. Working with such small pieces, like block #18, which contained 229 tiny pieces, was quite a challenge, but nothing compared to the satisfaction of seeing the completed work.” I’d be totally insane, too, if I tried this.
I don’t know which one had 229 pieces, but all of them are heavily pieced blocks. It was an amazing quilt and always had a crowd around it.
Carol Bryer Fallert became famous for her impeccably pieced flying geese in loop and swoops and swirls over the face of her quilts. She continues her pristine piecing in Checks & Balances, which is machine pieces, machine quilted and painted.
Did I mention she was known for her machine quilting, too? Amazing. Those cloth shadows really make the figures feel dimensional.
First, notice the interesting binding — it’s turned to the back, leaving a clean edge on the front.
Since Connie Fahrion’s quilt has a lot going on (but it was wonderful to look at in person) I think her choice of the clean edge was masterful. She says the design source for A Fine Pastry came from “the desire to depict how it feels to be part of a communication gone wrong. . . . A poor choice of works, misunderstanding all around and, voila! you have created, as my Italian neighbor would say, ‘un proprio pasticcio’ — a fine pastry.”
I’m a sucker for text in art. Yessirree.
Since I’m the kind of person who always wants to know “how did you do that?” I tend to focus on technique. Sometimes this frustrates, like when I’d like to create a text quilt like the one above and I don’t feel I have the artistic chops to do something like that, but other times my interest in technique lets me appreciate a quilt like this one by Helen Godden, titled Good Onya Sonya Onya Bike! This hand painted, whole cloth quilt allows the free motion quilting to really shine.
Annette Guerrero in her quilt, Gridlock, used a two-line motif in the shape of a modified T to create her quilt. From the smallest to the largest piece, you can see the T-construction.
Cool quilting, too, carrying out the theme of the grid.
Mrs. Lindberg’s Neighborhood, by Martha Lindberg.
Apparently she designed this quilt, then started a house swap with some friends, inspired by a quilt she saw at the Dallas Texas Quilt Show. Her friends’ blocks, and her own houses, populate this neighborhood.
Nice quilts we weren’t supposed to photograph. Or maybe it was okay to photograph them, but I was too tired to get all the info about them. Even though you might feel like you’ve seen every quilt in the exhibit, trust me. . . there were a lot I didn’t put in these posts.
Danielle Reddick, from Picton, Ontario, Canada was inspired by the fields in rural Prince Edward County to make Sunflower Heart for Alice, in honor of her daughter’s 21st birthday.
I’m including two detail shots because it’s not until you look at for a while that you realize you are seeing cut-up cast-off shirts. Note the button-front, above, and the pockets, below.
Eat Your Vegies, by Judith Roderick, a long time vegetarian.
I love her quilt even though she misspelled “vegies.” It’s veggies, if you are going to abbreviate it, but I have to admit that’s one of my “fingernails-scraping-on-the-chalkboard” words. I hate it. But I love this quilt!
Springtime in the Garden, by Mary Schneider, uses raw edge machine appliqué along with hand appliqué to create this sublime field of flowers. She made some changes to a pattern, to put her own stamp of originality on this creation. (I wished she’d given us the source of her inspiration, though.)
Pretty sure there was an exhibit on text, as there does seem to be quite a few quilts using letters and words in the design. This one, The Word Gets Around, by Louisa Smith, uses commercial fabrics that she manipulated by painting, dyeing and overdoing to obtain the colors she wanted. Her idea for the quilt came from the fact that “our lives are surrounded by text. . . [in] newspapers, advertising and street signs.”
The backside of her quilt.
Gaudi Star, by Lisa Walton Influenced by the architecture of Anton Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain.
This is one of those quilts where the the parts are greater than the sum. The parts (above) are fascinating, both in the use of shape and color and the screen printing which she did. Really beautiful, up close.
Terry Waldron is a favorite quilter of mine, a local gal who has had some fame and success, but still found time to write me a congratulatory note when she saw my quilt hanging in a show. So I thought it good to end these few posts with not only a lovely quilt, but a lovely quilter. The title of her quilt is A Gentle Heart, based on George Herbert’s statement, “A gentle heart is tied with an easy thread.”
This quilt is hand appliqued, hand beaded and machine quilted.
What do you feel like after you leave a quilt show? A lot of times my wallet and my hands hurt from gathering up treasures from the vendor malls. But aside from that, are you inspired? Overwhelmed? On overload? Me, too. And then it’s time to climb back into our lives, into the reality that we don’t have enough time or energy to make all those quilts we dream about, so we just choose what we can and make what we can.
But it’s always great when a quilt show comes around.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 