A chorus of artistic voices from all over the US and abroad are pouring into the Quilt Alliance office in Asheville this month. It’s entry time for our annual quilt contest and this year’s theme is “Voices,” We invite entrants to share their opinions, memories, language, conversation and truths in the form of a quilt. Help us document the state of quilting in 2017—let your voice be heard. And to ensure more voices are included, we have extended the postmark deadline to July 3, 2017. As part of our mission, the Quilt Alliance records the stories of quilts and quiltmakers through our oral history projects. We value the human voice as well as your voice expressed in cloth and thread. We encourage everyone who makes quilts to enter our annual contest regardless of their style (traditional, modern, art) or technique (longarm, hand quilting, applique, pieced…) –all are welcomed and valued! Join us for a walk down QA Contest Memory Lane! We are proud to present archives of all eleven years of Quilt Alliance contest entries on the Quilt Alliance website, as well as the Quilt Index site. For our 2011-2013 seasons, we asked artists to record their artists statements in audio form so that we could present and preserve the artists’ voices along with their quilts. Here are quilts and artist’s statements from our 2011 contest, “Alliances: People, Patterns, Passion.” Click on the audio files below each image to hear the makers of each quilt read their artist’s statement.
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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Add your voice to this contest! The Quilt Alliance has extended the deadline (now July 3, 2017) for its 11th annual quilt contest. This year’s theme is “Voices.” Artists are invited to share their opinions, memories, language, conversation and truths in the form of a 16” x 16” wall quilt. Help us document the state of quilting in 2017 and let your voice be heard. As part of our mission, the Quilt Alliance ensures the documentation and preservation of the stories of quilts and quiltmakers through our oral history projects. We value the human voice, as well as your voice expressed in cloth and thread. Everyone who makes quilts is encouraged to enter our annual contest regardless of their style or technique. Traditional, modern, art, longarm, hand quilting, applique, piecing are all welcomed and valued. Register for the Contest! For full information and registration, visit the Quilt Alliance website here. Registration is online. Finished quilts must be mailed to the Quilt Alliance office in Asheville, North Carolina with a postmark no later than July 3, 2017. The quilts will be exhibited on our website, and at 2017 Alliance events, including the Not Fade Away conference on July 15 in Herndon, Virginia. Other exhibition venues include the Quilters Take Manhattan fundraising event in New York City on September 19 and in the Alliance booth at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Nov. 1-4. All quilts will then be auctioned online in mid to late November to benefit the Quilt Alliance. All quilts will be labeled using StoryPatches. These special quilt labels have a QR code to link the quilt to its photo and documentation online. You can scan the label and instantly find out the artist’s name, artist’s statement and link to the artist’s website. The mission of the nonprofit Quilt Alliance is to document, preserve and share the stories of all types of quilters and every sort of quilt. The Alliance’s oral history projects, Q.S.O.S. and Go Tell It at the Quilt Show!, have recorded more than 1,200 stories of today’s quiltmakers. The Quilt Alliance helps quilters, quilt owners and groups like guilds and museums, record, archive and present the cultural heritage of quilting in America. Past Alliance contest quilts, left to right: Cover Us (2006) by Yvonne Porcella, Ode to Tamar (2009) by Allison Ann Aller, and Pineapple Log Cabin Renewed (2014) by Jane Hall. Contest Sponsors We are proud to announce that Handi Quilter Inc. will provide our top prizes. First, second and third place finishers will receive an HQ Stitch sewing machine (models 710, 510, and 210 respectively). Brenda Groelz, Director of Marketing and Education for the company says “At Handi Quilter, we give quilters the tools to make quilts that last. We applaud the mission of the Quilt Alliance to save the stories as well as the quilts. This contest allows quilters to further the Alliance mission, while also allowing quilters the opportunity to document and preserve their work in perpetuity.” Additional contest prizes contributed by these generous sponsors: Moda Fabrics, Aurifil, AccuQuilt, EZ Quilting, Simplicity Creative Group, and StoryPatches. View the complete “Voices” contest guidelines on the Quilt Alliance website here….
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] The 2017 Quilt Alliance contest is underway and we are receiving some lovely entries from longtime members and those new to the organization. Entries last year addressed the theme Playing Favorites and submissions featured favorite techniques, color palettes, concepts, materials and even favorite people and animals. This year’s contest theme is Voices and we are challenging our members to share their opinions, memories, language, conversation and truths in the form of a quilt. The 2016 Handi Quilter Grand Prize Winner was Margaret Cibulsky of Port Washington, New York. For her winning entry, “My Garden,” Margaret received her choice of either a HQ Sweet Sixteen sit-down longarm machine package or an HQ Simply Sixteen and Little Foot package from Handi Quilter, Inc. This year’s 1st through 3rd place winners will receive a HQ Stitch 710, 510 and 210 respectively. Past Quilt Alliance Contest winners (Grand Prize and 1st-3rd place winners) are ineligible for a period of 3 years to win 1st-3rd place awards in this year’s contest. For the 2017 contest, this includes 2014, 2015, 2016 contest winners. All past entrants are, however, eligible for Honorable Mention and Judge’s Choice awards. We asked Margaret to tell us about her quilting journey. In 2006, Cibulsky joined a quilting group in her Congregation who were making throw quilts for those in need of a lift. With basic skills under her belt, she was inspired her to make her first quilt. Cibulsky’s husband passed away in 2004, and the quilt was made of his clothing. She still considers this quilt, finished in 2010, to be her best. Cibulsky joined the NYC Metro Mod Guild around that time and has only missed a few meetings since. She is basically self-taught but she has learned from other guild members, from books and blogs. Cibulsky says although her first love was teaching, (32 years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher), designing and making quilts is her new passion, especially the process! Cibulsky sent us a look at how her 2017 Voices quilt was put together. [huge_it_gallery id=”16″]…
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.
Allie Aller
Meg Cox
Lisa Ellis
How many years have you been quilting and who taught you to quilt? Allie: 44 years quilting; taught by my cousin Tracy Seidman Meg: 28 years quilting; taught by my mom Lisa: 13 years quilting; taught by a friend from church, Gwen Emmett. Since she graciously taught me in her home, I have paid it forward and done the same for others. Where do you quilt and what themes or techniques are you currently working with in your studio? Allie: I quilt in my own sewing room at home. I’ve been intently exploring new approaches to stained glass quilting, after having spent several years pursuing the subject in the 1990s. I have a new book coming about this work in February 2017, Allie Aller’s Stained Glass Quilts Reimagined: Fresh Techniques and Design, from C & T Publishing. Meg: Soon, I will be quilting in a spacious studio next to my basement office. I’m making very personal quilts about my life, as well as memorial quilts using my late husband’s shirts LIsa: I quilt in my home studio. I have spilled out into what used to be our formal living room. I am currently working on a series based on the cathedral window. I am using the circular motif to pixelate images. The folds in the block add texture and depth to the design. What do you include on the labels of the quilts you donate? Allie: Quilt title, my name, where it was made, the month and year. If it is specifically for some one, I will write a personal inscription. Meg: The name of the quilt, date it was made, my name & often the name of the organization Lisa: I always include my name, location, and the date.
“Happy It’s Spring” by Allie Aller
“Digital Me” by Meg Cox
“Color Play” by Lisa Ellis
What inspires you to make and donate your quilts to the Quilt Alliance contest and auction? Allie: I believe in the Quilt Alliance’s mission, and want to support it. Also, I love being part of each group of contest quilts, because they are so diverse and as a whole make such a rich impact together. Finally, the design challenges for each theme every year are fun and inspire me to try new ideas. Meg: I love making quilts for Alliance contests because they challenge me to try new techniques and styles, and I know that they’ll be archived online permanently in the amazing Quilt Index (which makes it easier to give them away to strangers). Lisa: I wish to support an organization whose mission I believe in. I have always been drawn to the stories expressed in quilts. The Quilt Alliance mission to capture these stories in perpetuity is important to me. As a collector, what motivates you to buy a quilt? Allie: If I really love it and am inspired by it and want to live with it! Meg: I buy quilts that dazzle me and I buy quilts by iconic quilters whose work I want to own, including Luke Haynes, Pamela Allen, Yvonne Porcella, Jamie Fingal and Sue Nickels (all of whom have contributed quilts to the Alliance contests.) Lisa: I love to decorate my spaces with quilts and appreciate being surrounded by artwork created by other artists. Their ideas and creativity inspire me. Contact the Artists Allie Aller Meg Cox Lisa Ellis Thank you, Allie, Meg and Lisa, for sharing your quilt story and for donating many gorgeous quilts to our annual auction! Bid on the 2016 “Playing Favorites” quilts in our online silent auction, now through Monday, December 5 at 9pm EST on www.BenefitBidding.com/quiltalliance. Posted by Amy Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
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…
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…
