Category: quilt show

Putting on a Show

I’ve written before about how special my quilt guild (the Heart of Georgia guild) is to me.  I recently celebrated my 20th anniversary as a member and the sisterhood just gets stronger.  I spent this past weekend with those sisters at our biennial quilt show.  If you are local, I hope you had a chance to attend.

This year’s show displayed nearly 200 members’ quilts. And the 58 quilts hanging on the rails above the floor level were made by our guild for residents of the Methodist Children’s Home. Each resident receives a quilt when he/she moves in and keeps it for life. Our guild makes many quilts for this endeavor.

Quilt Show weekend is a special time for us.  We work together to present some of our latest work to friends and family – and to visitors who may be quilters, but not members of a guild as well as those who want to become quilters.  We want our sisterhood to grow!

I’ve written about several shows in the past and included photos of fabulous quilts.  I’m doing that here for this latest display, but this time I remembered to take photos of some of the work that goes into getting it all together. This year, our quilt show leader was Helen. She did a fabulous job of organizing everything, but it’s not a one-person job. Everyone helped!

Here is Dewey demonstrating use of his longarm machine at the show. Yes, he loads all that in his trailer, brings it over, sets it up to demonstrate, and allows visitors to try it out!

Before the show can even be laid out, someone has to collect all the information on the quilts and plan the layout.  This year, and for the past several shows, that person has been Dewey.  Dewey is our quilting brother.  A gifted artist at the longarm machine, Dewey is also quite the handyman and quilt show designer.

Dewey arrived and started setting up the poles (he had help from a quilter’s husband) and identifying which quilt would hang where. This is after two weeks’ work developing a layout on computer and then on the butcher paper.
Here Kaye is checking her quilts in. Each quilt is labeled and in a pillowcase. Data has already been sorted to assign a number to each quilt so it can be hung in the correct space.
As all those quilts come in, members resort by number to put them in place.
Here you see some quilts ready to be hung and stepladders ready.
And, the quilts are up! I took no photos in progress, I was busy on a ladder.
Sherry was busy (with some helpers) in the weeks ahead of the show making ribbons for the awards. These are the three ribbons to be awarded to recipients of votes by all viewers who attend the show. There were 18 more ribbons made to give to winners of votes by members on Thursday night.
While Thursday night’s votes were being counted, members and friends enjoyed food and conversation.
Julie’s farm-themed quilt was a big hit!
Carol’s Montana quilt was beautiful! By the way, there were many many beautiful quilts here…I shouldn’t share them all….just a representative sample.
Kathy’s scrappy quilt was fabulous…I had to share a closeup of her feather quilting on her longarm machine.

Deann won a ribbon for best hand quilting….for a different quilt…but my photo of this quilt shows the stitches more clearly.
Sheila’s masterpiece, Mimi’s Garden, won best appliqué and was quilted by Dewey on his longarm.
This is my Celebration quilt. It took home a ribbon for best quilting on a home sewing machine.

After everything was set up and ready, we welcomed visitors from 9:00 – 5:00 for two days. Then on Saturday afternoon, all this process was reversed. Quilts were dropped (gravity helped that process go faster than putting up), folded, reinserted into those pillowcases, resorted by quilter’s name, checked out, and carried home.

We’ve had a few days to put everything away at home and reflect on the fun we had. We are already thinking about the next quilt (it’s probably in progress) and planning how to make the next show better. I hope wherever a quilt show fits in your life; as a participant or a visitor, you make time to experience it.

Welcome to Quilt Village

One aisle of bed quilts and large wall hangings.

I just spent three days with my quilting sisters.  We hosted our guild’s quilt show and had a blast!  Normally held biennially, it had been four years since our big weekend party.  Covid had forced us to cancel our show in 2020, so we were ready to get back to business sharing our love of quilting with others. 

We host the show to share our passion and educate others about the history of quilting, the art of quilting, and the availability of resources available locally.  The truth is that members of the guild are also inspired by this display.  We’ve seen most of these quilts before in meetings at our show and tell sessions.  But having them hang together for three days gives us a chance to visit, to examine things up close, to ask questions of each other, and to learn.  

Susan’s Sweet Dreams quilt was made with many vintage feedsacks.

It’s a lot of work to put on a show.  Planning has been going on for months.  Members submit entry forms for quilts, members share the tasks of organizing that information, preparing booklets, labels, ballots, ribbons, and a floor layout.  On Thursday, all that comes into play as we “hang the show”.

On Thursday night, members and our guests meet to bask in the beauty with each other.  We examine the quilts and cast our votes in several categories.  “Quilters’ Choice” ribbons are awarded by our ribbon queen Tess at our members’ reception. 

During the show, we love visiting with our guests.  Some visitors are not quilters, but friends of quilters, or folks who are interested in every art form they can find.  Answering their questions gives us a new perspective on what we do…seeing our work through the eyes of those who might not be quilters puts a new spin on things. Other visitors are quilters from other guilds in the area, and I love to chat with them and learn about their quilting and their stitching groups.  In fact, I wrangled invitations to visit a couple of groups soon.  You’ll hear about them in the future.

At the end of the show, more ribbons are awarded (viewers’ choices) along with the winners of our silent auction quilts and our raffle quilt.  More details of some quilts and their makers are in the captions of photos that follow.

Angie’s Roseville Album won many awards: Best Appliqué, Best Bed Quilt, Best of Show, and 1st place Viewers’ Choice.

Pam is telling visitors about her Wind Beneath My Wings quilt which included some vintage barkcloth.
Marie’s Heart Strings portrays an image of her homeplace. I love of Marie’s use of raw edges, hand stitching, and photos on fabric.
Donna’s Italy Dream won 3rd place in the Wall Quilt category.
Yvonne’s quilt, Betty’s Quilt, won Best Hand Quilting. Whole cloth quilts are always loved by viewers.
Starlight, a beauty pieced by Donna, shows Dewey’s astounding longarm quilting. (He’s the same genius who prepares our floor layout.)
One of many scrappy quilts in our show, Kathy’s Selvage Kites features selvages from her stash in the background of the stars.

Is This the Party To Whom I am Speaking? (above) is a bold graphic quilt…but the title comes from the fact that Kathy’s mother is a retired telephone operator. Kathy collected fabrics with images of phones to include in her quilt. The detailed shot at the left shows some of those.

Idaho Square Dance was made by a new quilter. Carol got interested in quilting after making hundreds of facemasks for Covid in 2020. She needed to do something with her scraps. This is one of her first half-dozen quilts. And, she does her own quilting on her home machine.
Heaven’s Home was begun by beloved member Jean and completed by her son and daughter. Duree finished piecing the quilt, son Dewey quilted it on his longarm.
This photo shows many of my sisters as we pose with a group of quilts we made for the Methodist Home for Children. Our show was displayed in their gymnasium.

I had several quilts in the show, won’t bore you with all….but a few with links to their stories are here.

We shared our Challenge quilts from the past four years and my Playhouse in the Chickenyard was fun for many visitors, especially the men who attended. You can read that story here.
My Miss Nellie’s Country Garden sported a Viewers’ Choice ribbon on Saturday afternoon. Her story is here.
I admit that seeing my own quilt hung in the show inspired me…to do more work using linen. The lighting on this shot of Paducah Journey shows how wool batting and linen fabric work together to create glorious texture.

Fiber Art Show

My Lily for Ruth.

Sometimes I use the phrase fiber art or textile art to tell someone what I do.  That often leads to the question, “what’s that?”  My answer usually is something like, “I use traditional sewing and quilting techniques to create art to hang on the wall,” and I’m thinking of images like the one you see here.  But I know that the minute I say “quilt”, the listener’s mind often brings up an image of a quilt his grandmother made.

Since I’ve made plenty of quilts to cover beds, that image of my work is not wrong, it’s just incomplete.  Textile artists typically use fabric and techniques like dyeing and sewing to make items which can be practical or not.  So that definition fits me.  

My love birds piece.

Fiber artists are defined as those who may use those same skills but whose work prioritizes aesthetic value over utility.  Some of my pieces certainly fit that description.

One of several woven tapestries including natural elements.

I recently entered some work in a juried show of fiber artists and we went to see the exhibit a few days ago.  There were a few other pieces that included quilting, but there were other pieces that included woven tapestries, mixed media, even some millinery examples.

a quilted self portrait of one entrant

This exhibit is the  Fiber Arts Show and Sale at the Monroe – Walton County Center for the Arts.  The juried show displayed some 20 entries in this, its second year. 

I loved this whimsical moon.

The Art Center is filled with other interesting mediums, too.  There’s jewelry, pottery, paintings, photographs, and other appealing choices.

The blue ribbon winner was this huge woven rag rug.

This exhibit will be up for another week if you want to check it out.  Upcoming events at this venue can be found at their website: monroewaltonarts.org.  Check them out and look at local art venues near you for similar events.  Textile art and fiber art are now frequently part of the display at many galleries.

Millinery is an interesting form.

And, no, I didn’t win any ribbons from these judges this year, but I learned a lot.  And I had fun.  What else is there?

Folk Life Festival

Sheep, goats, old buildings, a quilt show, and MEN IN OVERALLS. What else could a country girl want on a Saturday?

The place was swarming with men in overalls, and suspenders, and straw hats. 

These sheep were waiting to help with the demonstration of shearing. (by men wearing overalls and suspenders, of course.)

Oh, and there was a train, too! This country girl was thrilled.  There was a tractor parade, as well, but that wasn’t as exciting somehow. One man sitting near me said, “I’ve seen all the tractors I want – when I was a boy, I saw the fields from the seat of one every day.”

There was even a quilt show on the grounds! The members of the Wiregrass Quilt Guild hosted their annual show and one of their members had a one-man show in another gallery.

The camera recorded images for upcoming art quilts.  Old buildings, animals, people.  Don’t you just know this guy wants to be on one of my Men in Overalls series?

And, one of the men in overalls came home with me. See, we had a goal in mind when we left home. We anticipated the dress for the day!

Yes, I have a pair somewhere, but the idea is MEN in overalls.

This was at the Folk Life Festival in Tifton.  The grounds are now part of ABAC and make up what is now called the Georgia Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village, but we who have known of it since its beginnings still refer to the place as the Agrirama, its original name.  More information about the place is here.

I’ve been in love with men in overalls my entire life.  in recent years, I’ve had fun with images of such men on art quilts.  As I wrote this, I did a search of my blog and realized there are several I’ve never posted.  Here is one of them:

This photo of an unknown child was printed on vintage linen, quilted, and mounted on a burlap canvas.

Details of some I have posted before are below:

The story of this piece is here.

And this one is detailed here.

I’m itching to play with the images of some of these guys I saw yesterday. Stay tuned for the results!

Quilt Show Eve

The quilts are all hung, the ribbons attached.  Our guild members have been busy today “getting the show on the road.”  Well, not on the road, but ready for viewers to enjoy.

Here are some teasing photos of ribbons awarded.  These ribbons are awarded in ten categories by votes from guild members.  Some quilts have more than one ribbon, being blessed with bling.  All the quilts there are wonderful, and have stories to tell.

It’s no surprise that the most decorated quilt is a Baltimore Album quilt by Joyce Jones.  Joyce is ninety-something and is a shining light in our sisterhood.  She reminds us that we are never too old to learn, to teach others, and to set a good example.  We all hope to be like Joyce when we grow up.

I wrote about Joyce when this quilt was in progress here.

I’ll share more stories later, but for now, enjoy some sights from the show.  These sample images might whet your appetite.  We are hoping you will come see us at The Methodist Childrens’ Home (the Rumford Center), 304 Pierce Avenue, Macon.  Hours are 10:00 until 5:00.

Click on any image to enlarge and zoom in.  Know that these were taken at night with an iPhone, so some low light conditions prevail.

Quilt Show Time

One of the delights in my life is the family that has come to me in quilting.  The work entailed in getting ready for our quilt show every two years is rewarded by the opportunity to spend three days with my closest friends.  As with any family, reunions are treasured times together.

Sharing our quilts with non-quilters is important, too.  We hope to educate people about the joys of quiltmaking, the processes involved in that endeavor, and the love that goes into every stitch. We always meet fellow quilt makers and want-to-be quilt makers and I never know which is more fun – talking with new friends who are already addicted, or sharing the fun with people who are just getting interested.

In between meeting and talking with new quilt friends, there is time to visit with fellow guild members.  For me, one of the biggest pleasures at the quilt show is examining each others’ quilts and sharing details of the techniques involved.  Just visiting.  As I’ve heard Susie say before, “it’s OUR three-day party.”  Though we see each other at meetings once a month, that’s only a couple of hours, and we are sometimes busy with, well, business.

But at the quilt show, the work has been done ahead of time.  We spend one day hanging the quilts and setting up, then the two days of “the show” to admire our collective work and visit.  On the evening after the quilts are hung, our spouses join us to see the display as we vote for our favorites.

The idea of reunion is continued here.  Jim and Ted reconnected at our guild’s show in 2012, having not seen each other since Army days 40 years prior.  Ted’s wife is a quilter, too, and seeing an announcement on Facebook about our show brought the guys together!  Such fun we always have visiting with them!

The photos here are from past shows. Like the photos here, if you visit with us, you will see quilts of all colors and sizes, using varying techniques and fabrics.  I hear that the total on display next week is 147 quilts.

 

This year, the show is March 9 and 10 at the Methodist Childrens’ Home in Macon.  This is a new location for us, and oh, so appropriate, since every resident at that facility is given a handmade quilt as they are settling in.  This tradition is nearly forty years old!  Some of those quilts have been made by members of my guild and by members of other quilt guilds in Georgia.  Stories of those quilts and the impact on the lives of the recipients can be found in a book entitled Patches of the Quilt.

If you live nearby, I hope you will join us.  If you aren’t close enough to come to our guild’s show, I’ll bet there’s one near you.  Spring is a popular time to schedule a quilt show!

The basket quilt you see at the top, and the closeup photo featured is by Alice Smith.

Earlier posts about quilt shows are here: https://sandygilreath.com/the-ribbon-maker/ and here: https://sandygilreath.com/my-new-friend-janet/ and here: https://sandygilreath.com/deadlines-are-good/.

Paducah 2017

The annual quilt contest of the American Quilters’ Society in Paducah, KY, was held last week and I was there. Two of my quilts were there, too. Jim and I drove up for a couple of days at the show.  As usual for us, the journey was as important as the destination, so back roads and side trips were a big part of the week’s adventure.

As wonderful as the show was, and always is, highlights of the trip included an overnight stop in Desoto Falls State Park, AL and a two-hour visit to Bell Buckle, TN.  In Kentucky, we spent time at Land Between the Lakes, then driving through stunningly beautiful scenery of green hills and blue barns as we headed east toward Berea.  We stopped for a visit to the city voted “the most beautiful small town in the US,”  Bardstown, then retraced steps from a trip 25 years ago, spending a night at the Boone Tavern Inn and visiting craftsmen and women in Berea.  Heading east to Waynesville, NC, we explored Cumberland Gap National Park. Our last night on the road was spent at a favorite B & B.

All these adventures held conversations with interesting people, photo opportunities that beg to become quilts, and stories to be told.  Later posts will detail some of that. But, for now, my impressions of the quilt show.

This year’s show included 404 quilts from 44 US states and from 14 other countries competing in 16 categories.  Prize money totaled $125,000 and more than 30,000 people attended.  More than 300 vendors were on hand to help me find supplies to make my next project.

I’ve attended this show at least six times, sometimes with friends, and staying four or five days.  But when Jim and I go, I can see it all in two days. This time, I saw all the quilts twice, took lots of photos, and visited the vendors I wanted to see on Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon.

The winners this year were stunning, as always.  Photos of the top winners are here.  All of the quilts are inspirational, and I walk around taking photos and making voice notes on my phone of details I want to study later.

Many of my notes this year were about Japanese quilts.  That’s not unusual.  I love the Japanese sense of color, their attention to detail, and the embroidery that often accompanies their appliqué.  This year, all three place winners in the hand quilting category were Japanese.  There were other categories where the Japanese aesthetic was notable, too.  I realized that  several of the Japanese quiltmakers (winners and non-winners) used a background fabric that was gradated.  They cut it and assembled it so that the center was dark, graduated out to lighter, then back again to darker.  You would be right to imagine that I headed to the vendor’s booths to see if I could find some of that.  I did!

I was pleased that most of the winning quilts have elements of traditional quiltmaking.  In recent years, some have been so densely embroidered by machine, or so encrusted by crystals, that it was hard to see evidence of human hands at work.

One of the features I’m always examining closely is the quilting, especially the machine quilting, since that’s what I enjoy most.  I expected this year to be full of ruler-guided quilting.  There was some, especially in the modern quilt category, but not as much as I would have predicted.  One phrase I did hear a lot at the awards ceremony was matchstick quilting.  This term refers to closely spaced parallel lines.

There was a lot of English paper piecing, and what seemed like more of the Baltimore Album style quilts than usual.

The quilts in the vendors’ booths are always inspirational, too.  New patterns, new fabrics, new tools have the cash registers singing.  My favorites include Wendy Richardson’s hand-dyed fabrics, seen in the photo above (with her permission).  Wendy dyes yardage of solid fabric with beautiful blends of many colors.  She also overdyes vintage linens and commercial fabrics in unexpected ways.  I always make my way to her booth on Tuesday evening to get first choice!

Other favorite booths for me include Primitive Gatherings, Front Porch Quilts, Fabric  Peddlers, Cherrywood and Liberty Homestead.  I saw a few other booths with intriguing merchandise, but I didn’t give a second glance to batiks or commercial fabrics. I have plenty of both of those categories.  The booths that caught my eye had interesting selections of unusual fabrics.  I did come home with some Japanese woven fabrics, some shot cottons, and some sueded hand-dyed cottons.

All my purchases have now been pre-washed and ironed and I’m ready to cut it up and sew it back together!  I have many ideas for new projects, and one of them includes a journal quilt commemorating this trip.

Photo details: You can click on any photo and it will open in another window with more detail.  You can zoom in even more in that view.  The featured photo (you don’t see this one if you read the email version, it’s on Facebook and on the website) is of the booth for The Sampler, which sells Kaffe Fassett fabrics exclusively.

The first photo (featuring leaves) is a closeup of Autumn’s Master Painter, by Anna Reich, Lewisville, NC.

The one with the ribbon is Karen K. Stone’s Wonderful World. Next is a closeup of A Time of the Madder Red, by Toyoko Nakajima of Kirya, Gunma, Japan; then My Baltimore Journey by Darlene Donohue, Hilton Head, SC.  The one with all the hexagons is Cache of Carats, by Gail Stepanek and Jan Hutchison of New Lenox, IL.   Later you see Cherrywood’s booth with all the solids and a couple of photos show some of my purchases.  Below are photos of my two quilts, Mom and Apple Pie, and Walker’s Pasture.  I’ve blogged about Walker’s Pasture before (here).  I need to tell the Mom and Apple Pie story, I guess.  Soon.

The Ribbon Maker

Version 2

Just look at these ribbons!  My local guild is preparing for our upcoming quilt show.  My friend Tess has been making award ribbons for this show since 2008.  A cherished award in any show, a ribbon from our quilt guild is a work of art in itself.

Last week I visited with our local Queen of the Ribbons.  Her quilts have won many prizes, and her sewing room is overflowing with awards.  This photo shows the ribbons she has made for this year’s show.  A first, second, third, and honorable mention in several categories makes for a dazzling array.  The log cabin blocks on point (those are tiny logs) are all painstakingly pieced.  And the design each year is unique, Tess choosing an element of the show’s raffle quilt each year.

Tess has an amazing assistant (her husband) who puts his engineering skills to work to create the graphic design for the wording on the ribbon and for a label for the back of the quilt block.  With the tiny quilt blocks, glue gun, and miles of ribbon, Tess astounds us anew every show.  Maybe that’s one reason we are willing to work so hard to prepare for our biennial show…the hope that one of those ribbons will ride home on one of our quilts.

And, if you noticed the rosettes that go to Best in Show winners, there is a show pin in the center.  Tess designed the show pin, as well.    She is a gem in our guild’s crown.  And, she will likely get to keep at least one of those ribbons because her quilts are fabulous, too.