by Amy Milne | Nov 29, 2016 | Alliance Quilt Contests, Guest Blogger, Inspired Giving
In this second post in our series Inspired Giving, you’ll hear from three Quilt Alliance board members who have both donated quilts to our annual auction and purchased quilts for their personal collection made by other artists. Allie Aller, Meg Cox and Lisa Ellis have each donated multiple quilts to the Quilt Alliance’s annual contest, exhibition and auction. We asked each of them to tell us more about their personal quilting history, and what inspires them to create, donate and collect quilt pieces. You can bid on the current group of Quilt Alliance auction quilts here. Tell us your name, location and occupation. Allie Aller of Washougal, WA, studio quilter, author, teacher. Meg Cox of Princeton, NJ, journalist. Lisa Ellis of Fairfax, VA, currently working part time as both an Engineer and Quilt Teacher. Both offer fulfillment. One pays the bills.
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Allie Aller
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Meg Cox
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Lisa Ellis
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“Happy It’s Spring” by Allie Aller
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“Digital Me” by Meg Cox
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“Color Play” by Lisa Ellis
by Amy Milne | Nov 14, 2016 | Alliance Quilt Contests, Fundraising
The Quilt Alliance presents a contest, exhibition and auction of small wall quilts every year. This key fundraiser supports our mission of documenting, preserving and sharing the history of quilts and their makers, and is an important opportunity to showcase and record the work of quilters in the U.S. and all over the world.Thank you to all of the artists who entered and donated a quilt (or quilts!) to the 10th annual Quilt Alliance contest! The “Playing Favorites” quilts will be auctioned in two one-week groups: Group 1 starts November 14 at 9:00 AM EST ends November 21 at 9:00 PM EST Group 2 starts November 28 at 9:00 AM EST ends December 5 at 9:00 PM EST Preview and Bid on the 2017 Auction…
by Amy Milne | Oct 28, 2016 | Alliance Quilt Contests, Guest Blogger, Inspired Giving
The Quilt Alliance launched its first quilt contest in 2007 with several goals in mind. One goal was to raise funds to support the Alliance’s move from Louisville, Kentucky to our present home in Asheville, North Carolina. We also wanted to establish this fundraiser as an annual intiative to provide ongoing operating support. Another aim was to document the work of our members by taking a “snapshot” of quilts made in a particular year. QA board members Karen Musgrave and the late Yvonne Porcella set out to make the contest friendly to all quilters, whether they identified as longarmers, hand quilters, modern quilters… or simply artists. With this in mind, they crafted an open-ended theme that anyone could speak to, and that tradition has continued. This year marks the Alliance’s 10th annual contest. Quilt Alliance quilt contests from 2007-2016 2007: Put a Roof Over Our Head 2008: My Quilts/Our History 2009: Crazy for Quilts 2010: New from Old 2011: Alliances: People, Patterns, Passion 2012: Home Is Where the Quilt Is 2013: TWENTY 2014: Inspired By 2015: Animals We Love 2016: Playing Favorites Quilt Alliance member Maude Wallace Haeger is one of the artists who created and donated a small house-shaped quilt (“Casa del Sol”) for our first contest back in 2007. She entered again in 2008, donating four quilts (that worked separately, or as a multi-paneled piece) for the Crazy for Quilts theme. This year, Maude entered our Playing Favorites contest. You can see her quilt along with all of the 2017 contest quilts here. In this innaugural post in our new series, Inspired Giving, I asked Maude to tell her story. During the school year my main job is special education teacher to students in an inner city school, but I am an artist no matter what I am doing and where I am. I try very hard to keep weekends for art work, but it is not a hobby to me, it is what I am driven to do – create. Cooking is a hobby – art is not a hobby. It is often hard work and can require a lot of energy and concentration, so I do not consider it relaxing, but I do enjoy it. I grew up in Urbana, Illinois, the child of two artist parents. From a very early age I found cloth, thread and needle the best way to work artistically or at least creatively. I would make things and then show my mother who would take my hands in hers and with tears in her voice say, “your grandmother would be so proud of you.” My maternal grandmother and great grandmother were both seamstresses, and my great grandfather was an itinerant tailor who, with his wife and children went from wealthy Russian house to wealthy house and sewed the clothes for the family. It is in the genes. My favorite things to do as a child were to look through the costume section of the World Book Encyclopedia and recreate the ethnic costumes for my Barbie doll. I didn’t ever really play with the doll, just made “couturier” clothes for her. I loved to embroider and did so for hours. I took art though all of high school, and my teacher would enter all of her students in the Scholastic Art show each year. I got my share of ribbons and pins, and did actually get the Hallmark purchase prize for a watercolor I did as a senior. But one could not get the purchase prize for textile work. This upset me, because even back in high school I felt that fiber art was just as much an art form as painting and drawing. One day at a University of Illinois faculty art exhibition, I was sitting on the stairs of the Krannert Art Museum watching all the people looking at the show. One of my parent’s friends and fellow art professor, Jack Baker, stopped to talk to me. I told him I wasn’t as much of an artist because I couldn’t paint and draw as well as I could create with thread and cloth. He told me that my stylus was a needle and that was as much a stylus as a pencil, pen or paintbrush! Through high school my medium of choice was embroidery. I struggled with what to do in college, but eventually found Eastern Illinois University where I was able to minor in crafts – weaving and finally graduated with a bachelor’s in weaving. It was after we adopted four hard-to-place children thirty years ago that I switched from weaving to piecing, and have never regretted it. My first piece for the Quilt Alliance was created the year that they were putting a roof on the new building in Asheville. I had fun making “Casa del Sol.” At this point in my life I cannot spend the time I did as a teenager to hand embroider anything, but I have been learning how to use the machine stitching to advantage. My entry for the Quilt Alliance contest this year, “Go Fish,” was inspired by a quilt I began for a different exhibition but never got to enter due to family, health and students! However, I have included a picture of what became the center of a much larger quilt. These gold fish are swimming in a pond in the center of a garden. It was my first time using Solvy and creating such intricate embroidery with a machine. The wonderful thing about quilt making is the scraps. I do not throw out many of them either. They just keep piling up in another plastic container and end up on a shelf. Then I take time to try to make an orderly arrangement of them and sew them together. In this next picture you see houses made of flower scraps. I have put a slide of how the houses look without all the thread work and how it changes them after I have stitched and stitched. Jack Lenor Larsen stated that if one wants a red piece of cloth to really be “rich in color” one has to have one warp thread be red and one be orange. This reminded me of all those wonderful Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings at the Chicago Art Institute. The observer’s eyes mix the color! I use that premise a lot in my work. In the detail view, you see an unfinished quilt square of some of the houses with layers of embroidery and net. I worked so hard on the piece I stripped the gears of my 28 year old Bernina! I have not finished the piece because I am waiting for the correct machine to complete them. I have titled this piece “Casas de Flores!”. As previously stated, throwing out cloth is not easy for me. In this piece you see navy blue and green in the background which was a motif I created years ago. It could have “stood on its own” as a piece, but I was not comfortable with it as it was. After a lot of thinking and experimentation, I saw a way to combine the original quilt with the new scraps and make a type of repeated design which became the cloth part of the quilt. I then used different thread sizes and colors to attach the scraps and to add textural interest and depth to the piece. Whether my work looks semi-traditional at times or very abstract, my hope is that my love of color and design will give joy to the observer. –Maude Wallace Haeger Thank you, Maude, for sharing your quilt story and for donating many gorgeous quilts to our annual auction! Bid on Maude’s quilt “Go Fish!” along with the other “Playing Favorites” quilts in our 2016 online silent auction, beginning November 14 on www.QuiltAlliance.org. The theme and guidelines for our 2017 Quilt Alliance contest will be announced in January 2017. Stay tuned! Posted by Amy Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Amy Milne | Sep 12, 2016 | New & Announcements, Quilter's Take Manhattan
Last week we launched our very first blog hop. Our stellar list of bloggers did a fantastic job to raise awareness of our annual fundraising event, Quilters Take Manhattan (QTM) and the Quilt Alliance mission. The QA Blog’s giveaway winner is: Denneen (Denny) Peterson! Because the Quilt Alliance is all about documenting, preserving and sharing the stories of quilts and their makers, I asked Denny to tell us her story. Denny Peterson and her husband Bill Meek I live in Sahuarita, Arizona. My husband and I belong to the Tucson Quilters Guild. We also have a small group of quilting friends who get together at each other’s homes approximately monthly to work on quilts, visit, and eat! My mother and husband quilt, too. My mother taught me to sew and she started quilting after I did. She makes some of the most wonderful colorful quilts! My husband was surrounded by fabric and sewing machines and went along with me to sew days for years before he started by quilting a table runner for my mother on my Bernina. Now he designs and makes his own quilts and does quilting for others on his longarm (a power tool for fabric, you know). I make all kinds of quilts that you can make on the machine–traditional and contemporary pieced and applique are on the list, but my current favorites are art quilts depicting buildings, animals, and landscapes. We attend local area quilt shows, including the Tucson Quilt Fiesta and the Valley Quilters Guild show (Green Valley, Arizona). We also attend Road to California most years. Last year my husband and I were Artists in Residence at Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in Ganado, Arizona and at Petrified Forest National Park near Holbrook, Arizona. We spent two weeks living in historic housing at each location, gathering inspiration, designing and making quilts, meeting with park visitors to talk about quilting, the AIR program, and the parks; and then we made quilts to give to the park in exchange for housing and access to the parks. Here is a photo of my husband Bill Meek and me with a quilt (Shared Heritage) that we made as a result of our stay at Petrified Forest. That quilt has an informative label! Thanks again so very much! A list of all QTM Blog Hop Participants and links to their posts can be found here. Didn’t win? 🙁 Good news! You can support the Quilt Alliance and enjoy Quilters Take Manhattan from home by purchasing a QTM Moda Home Ticket today. Purchase your Home Ticket here. The QTM Moda Home Ticket provides a chance for those who can’t make it to the Big Apple to experience their own home slice of the event. Home Tickets cost $35 ($30 for QA members). You will receive the QTM Goody Bag, packed with samples and treats from all of our sponsors, by mail in late September, Home Ticket holders will also receive priority access to online video of our Sunday with Sponsors event (sent via email link 2 weeks after event), and are entered to win select door prizes. Please note: this year’s Home Ticket will not include footage of QTM lectures and interviews due to the prohibitive cost. Home Ticket holders play an important role in supporting the work of the Alliance–thank you! Posted by Amy Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Amy Milne | Sep 5, 2016 | New & Announcements, Quilter's Take Manhattan
Today we launch our very first blog hop! We have a stellar list of blogs (see list below) to help us raise awareness of our annual fundraising event, Quilters Take Manhattan (QTM) and the Quilt Alliance mission. To win a QTM Moda Home Ticket via this blog, please leave a comment about why you’d like to win. We’ll pick a winner at midnight tonight (9/5 at 12pm EDT) and post it at the close of the Hop. (Other hosts will give instructions on how to win in their giveaway.) Also visit today for your chance to win: Chris Dodsley @made by ChrissieD Pat Sloan AccuQuilt The QTM Moda Home Ticket provides a chance for those who can’t make it to the Big Apple to experience their own home slice of the event. Value of $35 ($30 for QA members). Winners of the Moda Home Ticket will receive by mail in late September a QTM Goody Bag, packed with samples and treats from all of our sponsors, and a chance to win select door prizes. Home Ticket holders will also receive priority access to online video of our Sunday with Sponsors event (sent via email link 2 weeks after event). Please note: this year’s Home Ticket will not include footage of QTM lectures and interviews due to the prohibitive cost. Home Ticket holders play an important role in supporting the work of the Alliance–thank you! Drawings are open to all, but international winners are responsible for any customs fees that may be charged when shipment enters their country. Visit the QTM Blog Hop page for full details. Schedule of Participating Blogs Day 1 – Monday, September 5 Quilt Alliance Chris Dodsley @made by ChrissieD Pat Sloan AccuQuilt Day 2 – Tuesday, September 6 Victoria Findlay Wolfe @VFW Quilts Erin Sampson – Aurifil @Auribuzz Freespirit Fabric Heather Jones@Heather Jones Studio Day 3 – Wednesday, September 7 Moda Fabrics @Moda Cutting Table Denyse Schmidt on Instagram @dsquilts Debbie Jeske @A Quilter’s Table Day 4 – Thursday, September 8 Jacquie Gering @tallgrass prairie studio Jessica Skultety @Quilty Habit Gotham Quilts @Fabric Nerd Handi Quilter Day 5 – Friday, September 9 Kim Niedzwiecki @my go-go life Leslie Tucker Jenison John Kubiniec @Big Rig Quilting Good luck, everyone! We hope to see you on our blog today and in the Big Apple for Quilters Take Manhattan in September 2017! Posted by Amy Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
