“Making Do: Southern Style” by Merikay Waldvogel Merikay Waldvogel’s 1990 book Soft Covers for Hard Times: Quiltmaking and the Great Depression marked the beginning of serious study of 1930s quilts. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, Merikay interviewed older quiltmakers primarily in the Southeast to learn more about how they made their quilts. Even though the South was somewhat isolated, national marketing to revive quiltmaking reached both urban and farm women of the South. Thousands of new “modern” patterns, ready-made kits, and time-saving tools changed how quilts were made in the South. However, the tradition of “Making Do” remained strong.

Merikay is particularly fond of the quilts made without a pattern. She finds joy in the so-called “mistakes” where rules are broken. Her slide presentation will focus on those quilts. From her own collection, she will bring Southern examples of feedsack, scrap, and string quilts.

Merikay Waldvogel is a quilt historian, curator and author living in Knoxville, Tennessee since 1976. She has written several books and articles. She has served on the Boards of the American Quilt Study Group and the Quilt Alliance. In retirement, she travels more often to seek out birds in faraway lands. Quilts and their stories remain her passion.

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Michael Cummings[/caption]“Michael Cummings has been working with the quilt form since the early 1980’s. Cummings has successfully synthesized aesthetic qualities found in folk art, in African and African American art (think Romare Bearden), in music (specifically, jazz), and in diverse textile and non-textile narrative traditions, to arrive at a unique and sincere expression that trumps the frequently overwrought and sentimental picture quilts of less able makers. He’s committed to telling the stories of African Americans across a broad historical, social, cultural, philosophical, and mythological spectrum. His recent “A Young Obama” takes an objective, biographical approach to representing the first African American president, but Cummings’s pride and admiration are palpable. Here are two black men—the artist and the politician —looking purposefully and unblinkingly at new American paradigms and at a future of possibility that fulfills the dreams of their fathers.”

Michael James Surface Design Journal

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Dr. Carolyn L. Mazloomi[/caption]Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi is a historian, curator, author, lecturer, artist, mentor, founder, and facilitator — and has left her mark on many lives. Trained as an aerospace engineer, Carolyn Mazloomi turned her sites and tireless efforts in the 1980s to bring the many unrecognized contributions of African-American quilt artists to the attention of the American people as well as the international art communities.

From founding the African-American Quilt Guild of Los Angles in 1981 to in 1985 founding the Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN), Mazloomi has been at the forefront of educating the public about the diversity of interpretation, styles and techniques among African American quilters as well as educating a younger generation of African Americans about their own history through the quilts the WCQN members create.

A major force as an artist in her own right, Carolyn Mazloomi’s quilts have been exhibited extensively in venues such as the Mint Museum, American Folk Art Museum in New York City, National Civil Rights Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC Her pictorial narrative quilts make plain her personal themes: family life, women’s rights, political freedom, and musical legacy. Her own quilts have appeared in over 70 exhibits, while she has curated 17 extensive exhibits of quilts made by members of the Women of Color Quilters Network, many of them traveling exhibits. Among the many exhibitions she has curated is “Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations,” which visually surveys 400 years of African American history. It is the largest traveling exhibit of African-American quilts ever mounted.

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Pokey Bolton is the founder of Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors magazines, and Founding Host of Quilting Arts TV on PBS. When Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors were acquired by Interweave, she then became the Editorial for the Quilt, Paper, and Sewing divisions within the company. After her tenure at Interweave, Pokey took the new position of Chief Creative Officer at Quilts Inc., for both the International Quilt Festivals and Quilt Markets. After two and a half years in Houston, with her experience in publishing, media, events, and craft adventures (by land and sea), she founded Crafting a Life, LLC, a media and events company based in Napa, CA. Her first event CRAFT NAPA launched in January 2016 in downtown Napa, and took place again this past January. She recently added publishing to the business and the book, Playful Fabric Printing authored by Carol Soderlund and Melanie Testa made its debut in January. Pokey has also served multiple terms on both Studio Art Quilt Associates and International Quilt Association boards.

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