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!

Quilt National Opening!

Finally, the long awaited day arrives!  I drive two hours down to Athens, OH early afternoon so I can have the gallery all to myself! Unfortunately my graphic designer couldn’t come at tha last minute due to a sick child.

It was a lovely but cold day and I arrived before the 3pm opening to the artists and just walked around the gallery alone in silence!

This show seemed particularly beautiful! Is it because I know the quilts so intimately now after working with their images for months?

At 3pm the artists only were allowed into the gallery and that’s when the fun began!  I tried to get autographs in my copy of the show catalog and also photos of the artists with their work.

Right at the front entrance was this quilt…Mona in the Era of Social Butterflies by John Lefelhocz. John had frames ready so we could take his photo to resemble Mona’s! funny man! What you can’t see is that Mona is made up of ‘keys’ with letters on them that is a series of words/thoughts! Very clever! 

This quilt, MOONSET by Brienne Brown, had so much detail and tiny free motion images that it blew me away!  It is dark gray silk with two different colors of black thread at base and two different white shades in this jellyfish area. Wow! And I thought I had seen fantastic free motion but this and the next one were masterpieces.

Round and Round It Goes by Paula Kovarik.  This quilt turned out to be the endpapers of the book and it is so impressive. The flowing free motion of the quilt story idea is mesmerizing and you could stare at it for hours and still not see it all!  Of course many collectors were fighting over purchasing this one but I think Paula will keep this masterpiece.

At the front door, I saw this artist, Cris Fee from Ohio and I did a double take and looked over my shoulder to the quilt on the wall called Contemplating Self and knew she was the artist!  It is a remarkable self portrait in fabric and perfectly done, don’t you agree?

A few years ago at the Houston quilt show, it was all abuzz with the awards won by a new girl, Sheila Frampton-Cooper. Isn’t that a rock star name?  So I was glad to be able to meet and talk with her about this quilt, From a Seed. To me it looks like a funky bird!  Sheila has lots of energy, enthusiasm and ideas. Her painting and stitching techniques are wonderful. Perhaps this is ‘modern’ quilting in a different sense of the word!

Brigitte Kopp came from Germany to see her quilt, Hands Off-Hau ab!

and Dianne Firth came from Australia. This quilt, STORM, is two layers of net with red felt ‘raindrops’ sandwiched between. When you hang it 10” from the wall and shine a light on it, you get this tremendous shadowing effect!

I have been wanting to meet Robin Schwalb since I am drawn to her asian themed quilts with a little bit of whimsy. This is called Jive Boss Sweat and comes from a recent trip to Japan. She lives in Brooklyn, my former stomping grounds and we had a nice short talk.

A very nice souvenir that Quilt National made for each of the artists is a poster starring a detail of their quilt to take home! Every quilt could have been a cover which made it so very hard for us to decided this year!

At 5pm, the doors were opened to the families and the general public and the gallery was filled to capacity so it was nice that we had a few hours alone with just the artists. Appetizers and drinks were served for two hours and the winners of the awards were announced.

At 7pm, the artists and invited guests went to the Ohio Univ Inn down the street for the banquet and awards celebration. I was fortunate enough to sit at the head table with the director of the Dairy Barn and the director of Quilt National along with sponsors, Luana Rubin of eQuilter.com, Robert James of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, Friends of Fiber Art and Marianne Burr, cover artist.

Elin Noble was the lucky winner of the trip to Japan to teach and visit!

I wish I could have stayed for the next day when they had breakfast at the barn followed by a tour of the quilts with the artists explaining their thoughts on their pieces.  But I had to return home for graduation of my youngest son which was even more exciting than the opening…at least to me!

Prizes and Survey

Here is a fun activity for you to do while I go to Athens, Ohio to attend the opening of the Quilt National show, meet the artists and take some photos for the next blog post!

Many companies in the quilting industry have joined together to find out what you want in the future .  WE are giving away lots of goodies! All you have to do is fill out the survey and you will be automatically entered to win! I’m giving away lots of books and there is even a sewing machine to win!

Click on the link to start…http://bit.ly/16kYhaF

HURRY! THIS ENDS MAY 31 !!

More Colors of Guatemala

On the bus ride we saw a hospital on the right and directly across the street was a funeral home and behind it in the distance was this colorful cemetery! That would be disturbing to see from the hospital room I thought and I wonder what the hospital survival rate is!  Here is where zoning matters!

Besides weaving another important craft in Guatemala is woodworking. We bought small trays in a little town called Panajachel and also some bird candlesticks. Just loved the primitive style and the bright colors.  All of this was $60 U.S.!

These boats were wood and very simple also. We watched them take seaweed out of the lake to use for fertilizer, we were told.

There were many masks and other carved and painted wood items at the markets. All very colorful!

But the best example of their woodworking skills were the doors in the city of Antigua! I wish we could have one of them. Some were like the gates in Europe…they are large and the entire thing can open so your car can drive into the courtyard or just a door can open for a pedestrian to enter as in the photo below.

And my favorite door was in Santiago de Atitlan:

It’s a bit too elaborate for a house in Ohio though!

Guatemalan crafts

Textiles in Guatemala are probably the most important craft for their economy and their cultural heritage. The weavings are basically two types. One is ikat or just weaving that is done by machine and is a medium-weight cotton, such as the back of these pillows that I bought.

They use this for many souvenir items.

The other type of weaving is the traditional back strap loom as shown in the last blog. Women tie the loom to a tree, or some anchor, and then the other end is tied around their waist. They move back until there is tension on the warp and then weave with a shuttle and a wooden tamper. What I find most amazing is that I didn’t see any paper patterns near by any of the weavers so I think they are doing all this from memory or just by what is pleasing to their eye.( It cost me $1.25 to take this photo of her.)

If you are a weaver you can notice that the sticks on the right are the treadles to create the pattern. Primitive but effective. These weavings are much thicker and when they change colors, sometimes they don’t carry the thread across on the back but instead, cut it and leave a thready mess on the back as shown below.  Sometimes it is lined but I think that most of them are not lined to show the tourists that they are HAND made and not machine. Many cannot tell the difference.

Here are the two pillows that I bought made of this backstrap weaving:

This bottom one was originally woven to be a shirt/huipile as you can see by the circle and slit for the neck opening. Or perhaps it was a worn shirt that they made into a pillow cover?

I saw lots of machine embroidery on weavings and souvenir items. It looked more crude than the embroidery we do with our home machines. It seemed to have longer stitches, maybe to give the appearance of hand embroidery.

I told myself that I wouldn’t buy machine embroidery because, theoretically, I could do it myself on my machine at home!! So here is what I bought:

It is a Quetzal bird in the center, which is the national bird and the name of the currency.  It is very rough crewel which is what they sell there but still, you know it took hours of work and probably cost me around $25!

Prices are very inexpensive in Guatemala for all that hand labor. Weavers know that an 8 foot table runner like the ones I bought above would take days or weeks…I don’t weave but I know it is a long time and they don’t charge enough. I think we paid $23 for each of those and if I were weaving it, you’d never get it for less than a few hundred dollars!  Bartering is expected everywhere but we had a hard time doing that when an embroidered blouse I wanted started at $11.

More on the country sights and treasures in the next installment. This is making me want to go back soon!