quilt show raffle quilt
Besides the quilt displays, the Vendor’s , Gallery talks by curators of the Shelburne Museum, buying quilt raffle tickets, the display of approximately 75 quilts in the collection of the Vermont Historical Society will be seriously impressive.
I hope you can get to this amazing annual show. If you go, the address of the Champlain Valley Exposition is 105 Pearl St., Essex Junction, Vermont.
 Kentum, Deborah Melton Anderson |
 Ori-Kume #3, Sue Cavanaugh |
 Eye of the Storm, June O'Neil |
 Martello #1, Sandra Palmer Ciolino |
The exhibit shows until July 14, 2011 at Zanesville Museum of Art, Zanesville, Ohio
Value supplies a sense of texture to a quilt. Value is the relationship of one fabric to another fabric, and one group of fabrics to another in the quilt construction.
Shown below, first row left is Take Me To Your Leader, from a Flickr photo and quilter wowcarn. The quilt right, a New York Beauty style, was displayed at a quilt show in Manchester, England. Contemporary and traditional styles both effectively create impact and curiosity through the careful placement of the extremes of black and white fabric.
Second row below, left is T Lucky Numbers quilt, by Linda Miller. Linda chose accent color red to add intrigue to a traditional quilt block. Contrast this quilt with an all black Dear Jane quilt that was shown at the same Manchester quilt show. While we can appreciate the incredible amount work involved in the Dear Jane quilt, without some relief in the form of even a minor amount of third color, the result, while stunning, is still “flat”, as in no fizz.
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In the row above, left is Yikes, Stripes!, in the collection of Lincoln University, Nebraska. Obviously an antique, this quilt blasts very positive energy at the viewer. While not strictly black and white, contrast value has been remarkably rendered. Above right is Which is Which, by mamacjt. Bold and graphic, it’s quite another approach to the challenge, “make a black, white and another color quilt”.
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Kay M. Capps Cross is the author of several quilt books focussing on the effective use of black and white fabric in quilts and related quilting projects. She encourages the discerning use of a zinger color, or maybe even several supporting colors. Shown above are two quilts from Kay’s Black and White Quilts, by Design.
And finally, below glory in the incredible thumbnail of a full size Texas Star type quilt, entirely in black and white. It’s “zinger” is the simple uneven size placement of the ground fabrics, both of them plain white and black cloth.
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 Orange Peel, cover from 2011 book Every year since 1994, the year of the Double Wedding Ring contest, the American Quilter’s Museum has presented a traditional pattern as the theme as inspiration to all quilters to help grow their talents and imaginations in quilt making. Then the winning quilts become part of a traveling exhibition for the next 12 months as well as a commemorative book. |
 the retrospective book of annual winners A book entitled Editor’s Choice For New Quilts from an Old Favorite, published by the AQS is now available, and it includes the first place winners from the past 18 contest years. The 18 winners honoured in this collection share design tips, techniques and essays to help those who want to make traditional quilts with an artistic flair. |
Upcoming challenges are Baskets for 2012 and Jacob’s Ladder for 2013. Sponsors include Janome, Moda and Clover. Continue reading
3x3 grid by David Moore
The Sudoku craze has not diminished since it became popular in North America about 5-6 years ago. Not surprisingly, this addictive number puzzle game has generated interest and books for making Sudoku themed quilts.
This Flickr photo of Sudoku Quilt 60, by Melisande, with both front and back shown below, is not quite quite the standard Sudoku grid of 9×9=81 squares but look how it glows!
If you have ever tried three dimensional fold and tuck quilt assembly, you can not help but admire Melisande’s ingenious manipulation of fabric and tremendous visual impact.
DMC 340, Pale Violet
a color poem by Michael Beal
It’s even hard to find in my bag of colors, this pale violet,
snuggled in among the purples and the lavenders
and the grays that go toward red and blue.
I plucked it out, the way one plucks the first violet of spring, that tiny flower with almost no stem
nestled down among the leaves like a jewel dropped
by a forgetful goddess
on her way to meat a god.
Not a big god. Not Weus or Mars or Vulcan,
none of those macho dudes clanking away at major deeds.
No let’s say Aurora’s on her way to meet the god of evening,
the god of winger evenings in Manhattan where the afaterglow
of the sun’s descent above the Palisades
takes on this violet hue,
and Cary Grant in an East River penthouse
starts dressing for a night on the town.
The jewel lies there til spring when Cary and Grace Kelly
chance to find it as they stroll Central Park in the sun.
He wears a pale blue sweater and a crocus-yellow shirt.
She wears a dress of pale violet and a big straw hat with
purple ribbons.
She laughs with the sound of coins shaken in a champagne
glass as she drops the jewel again, an accidental flower in the fresh green grass.
Amish Culture, Beliefs and Traditions Identified in their Quilts
The Amish have an expression that all Amish schoolchildren learn from a very young age, the meaning of ‘Joy’. The needs of the individual are given up in order to promote the harmony and success of the group.
It’s this belief, that one’s own needs and desires come last after everything else that gives the Amish the determination and drive they are so often credited with in everything they seem to do.
Applied to quilting, no matter how tired you might be after all of your chores are done, you still have a responsibility to help out others before you consider your own wants and needs.
If one of your children needs a new quilt, you need to find time to complete it. If a family member will be getting married soon and you want to present them with a new quilt as a wedding gift, you need to find time to make it. If you are bringing extra income to the family through your Amish quilting skills, you need to find time to produce it. The question for the Amish is not ‘how do they find the time,’ it’s ‘how can they not find the time’ if it helps to promote the success of the greater good.
Yes the Amish do have incredibly busy lives filled with long hard work throughout the day. And they find time to create such things of beauty as the Amish quilts for another fine reason - they enjoy the process of making something from nothing while also providing for their families and community at large. Creativity is allowed and is joyfully explored through bold colors and geometric designs in what we “others” might describe as their otherwise bland and static world. This joyful spirit is what makes the Amish unique and this is why and how the Amish find the time to quilt.
Quilt Designs Based Fibonacci Spirals The Fibonacci spiral is created by drawing arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares of a Fibonacci tileing, as subsequent squares take a quarter turn. This spiral formation pattern is found throughout the natural world, the nautilus shell being the most striking. For generations quilters have loved the Snail’s Trail quilt block. It’s Fibonacci!
These math diagrams help us see the details of the progression of the spiral. The middle diagram is the Fibonacci spiral aligned on a polar graph. The third diagram has been named the cosmic bud.
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Many quilt blocks are based on the Fibonacci sequence 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55…
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Ordered Chaos in Quilt MakingIn art, as in life, when something is too ordered it becomes boring, but when it is too chaotic, it can be overwhelming.
detail of Undercurrents by Eileen Lauterborn
Unity and variety are the two dominant principles of design. A designer or artist can set a mood, a tension a peacefulness or a chaos, depending on how unity and variety are balanced in a composition. One of the pleasures many quilters have enjoyed through generations of “quilt history” has been in creating erratic looking orderly quilts. Quilters have shown an innate sense of ordered chaos when they planned and sewed the type of bed coverings we usually label traditional.
ordered chaos, detail of a traditional quilt style
ordered chaos in an antique crib quilt
In the CQA Quilting News,
by Stanley Crouch, NYDailynews.com
651 stunning quilts on display at the Park Avenue Armory,NYC
People move to America in order to become what they want. After all, individual freedom is the essence of the supposed American Dream. That is made clear at an exhibit of quilts at the Park Avenue Armory, which was built to honor the first regiment that answered Lincoln’s call when the Civil War began 150 years ago.
On display are 651 stunning red and white quilts loaned by Joanna Rose to the American Folk Art Museum. The wife of Daniel Rose, one of New York’s most high-minded philanthropists and well-respected real estate developers, she began collecting quilts in 1957. They have never been exhibited in a single space like this.
A gala was held on the eve of the exhibit’s opening March 25, 2011.
Quilts became popular in the 19th century, when American women sewed the swatches of material into a wide variety of forms and geometrical shapes. Though many quilts existed solely for household use, many others were made in support of abolition and to fund Civil War troops.
Glimpsing their quality today makes clear how superior these quilts are to most nonobjective modern painting. The best are intricate and brilliant in the way that jazz is, a refined musical form too often overshadowed by shallow entertainment, insipid trends and academic pretension.
Those who came out for the gala stretched across the professions and our highly diverse population. These people seemed to highlight and complement the imaginative and varied designs of quilts that capture our nation’s entire history. Indeed, the quilts reminded many of their backgrounds and cultural heritage, especially since quilts have been central to various cultures that are today quintessentially American, no matter how far apart they once seemed.
Stanley Crouch‘s column appears in the Daily News every Monday. Stanley, who has written for the paper since 1995, has received many awards for his writing, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. His books have been widely praised and he was recently inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
