NQA, part 2

So many remarkable quilts at the National Quilting Assoc exhibition this year…as in every year!

I start with this quilt since I’ll be in Venice in a few weeks and I find this amazing and a great representation of all that is Venice. The technique is so high quality and the composition so sophisticated!

This was an outstanding double award winner. I think it was painted after quilting…a new technique that looks wonderful. See each star is painted a little differently.

Here is a quilt that stopped us in our tracks! Large but all gold with beading, lots of stitching and so Art Deco.

Love the colors and pattern of this stunning mariner’s compass quilt below:

And here is Mark Sherman’s quilt that I’ve only seen in photos before this. Wonderful color and pattern, lots of stitching!

Ricky Tims had a quilt that was traditional patchwork but with some fabulous quilting when you got up close. I think he dyed these fabrics which were spectacular!

Love this stylized fantasy flower quilt. Sort of reminds me of some Jane Sassaman quilts. Lois must be a fan too because I can see some of Jane’s dots fabric in this quilt! Well deserved ribbons!

A favorite quilt because I love the colors and the black/white squares!

As a child we had big philodendron plants in my father’s restaurant and I hadn’t seen any for decades until I went to Hawaii. They were all over the islands and they call the plant “Monstera”. The holes are the interesting part of the giant leaves.

More next week. You should put this show on your calendar for next June!

National Quilting Assoc Convention

Every June I travel 12 miles straight down HIgh Street to the Columbus convention center for the big NQA show!  They offer lots of classes by national teachers, fun get-togethers, a large exhibition of quilts and of course, vendor booths!

I always look forward to seeing the quilts and seeing if friends won ribbons. This year friend and master free-motion quilter Beth Schillig entered a new concept and won Second Place for Art Innovative Quilt! Go Beth!

Can you believe this detailed stitching? She is a master and I LOVE this art quilt!

This is by friend and neighbor, Teri Tope, of her in-laws. I recently took this class from her and while it is a rather simple concept-- stitching straight black lines close and spaced from each other- it takes some skill to finesse the shading.  She is a master and expect to see a book on this technique from her in the near future. This is such an innovative style and she captures the expressions beautifully!

So, MODERN QUILTING…?  What does that mean to you? Over the past few years, this ‘new’ theme has come to the foreground of quilting and started a revolution.  Is it just bedquilts with white or gray backgrounds and some sparse color and patchwork? Are they all ‘beginner’ level skill? All of a sudden what I’ve known as quilting is old-fashioned!? I’ve been pondering this as have many quilters of the older generation.

Here are some quilts from the show that I think can bridge that modern/ traditional gap or redefine ‘Modern’ quilting. A little more skill, a little more color and color variation. Definitely LOVE these!

Let me know what you think and I’ll post more quilts from the show next week.

The Quilt National cover decision.

As I wrote in last year’s blog…it is very difficult to decide on the book cover.  After all, the book IS judged by the cover. Maybe you buy the Quilt National book every time for your collection of Quilt National books, but I can’t bank on that. I have to make an appealing cover to convince someone to first, pick up the book; second to look at the back cover and third, to browse through the book to see if they want to buy it. Sometimes I only get the first of the three (if the cover appears in a catalog or online) and so the pressure is great!

We-myself, my graphic designer and Kathleen Dawson, the director of QN- tried to pre-select possible quilts that we thought would make great covers. As I said, we didn’t want a turquoise one so it would look different from the last book.  We didn’t want to feature one artist too often. We wanted a colorful cover so a black quilt would be out/sorry to the most gorgeous black quilts I’ve ever seen (but it did make the back cover)! And the same for the all white quilt- but it did make fantastic end papers for this book!

The choices were photographed and then they were cropped and put into mock covers for all of us to see. We tried the Best of Show as we thought it deserved a cover but it didn’t work well due to the many small pieces.  It was very difficult and there was no consensus on the first round so more had to be created/much more than the 3, I initially wanted to have!

Please note that this blog is very difficult for me to write because I don’t want to hurt any of the artists’ feelings but I thought it would be interesting to explain our process…which is totally objective.  All the quilts are remarkable works of art but we three had to give it our best educated opinions and ONLY pick ONE!

One of the quilts that wasn’t suggested, but I thought looked terrific, with high graphic impact was this oil rig, however I was outvoted.

Without commenting on why these did or didn’t make the cover, because frankly I don’t know all the reasons, I am showing you what we had.  YOU be the judge!  Let us know if you agree with our final selection or if you have a strong opinion on another cover.

It was not easy to get a consensus and there were others involved, but we were all very happy with our choice of Marianne Burr’s, Through The Lens.  We liked seeing the hand-stitching close up,  the transparency of the fabric and the colors with the lime title band plus the pleasant disc shapes and it was unique from past covers.

So, after finally deciding on the front cover, we had to then work on the BACK one!