A message from Alison 1

Recently I struck up an email conversation with Alison Schwabe, an internet pal who lives in Uruguay, whose blog I read.  She announced that she got into Quilt National 21 and lamented the fact that this time around she probably won't be able to go to the opening festivities next spring, as she had for all the previous QNs she was in.  I sent her congratulations and mentioned that I couldn't remember which of those celebrations she and I both attended -- the only time we have met in person, to the best of my recollection.

Alison wrote back and said "I think we might have both been at QN09 where your wonderful piece Memorial Day was hung so impressively there in prime position near the entry! ...I imagine it is in a collection now?"

Funny she should mention it, because just this month Memorial Day went off to its permanent home, at the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.  IQM is attempting to acquire as many as possible of the big prizewinners from all previous Quilt National shows, thanks to a grant from the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, and my quilt qualified because it won the Quilts Japan Prize at QN09.

It was a bittersweet task to pack up Memorial Day and send it away forever.  Yes, it will be seen by many, many more people, and be taken care of in much more archival fashion than it has been for the last nine years, packed in a box under my guest room bed.  But mothers always worry a bit when their babies grow up and leave home.

Here's a peek of it, still beautifully wrapped in a sheet from when I last had it out in public, and as it went away to Nebraska.  (Because the quilt consists of 4,083 tiny bits, hanging by threads, it's extremely difficult to fold it properly.  When I sent it off to QN I had three friends and a very large table to help me.  When I took it off the wall almost four years ago, my son and I struggled for a long time on the floor to get it refolded.)

Alison said she looked up Memorial Day in her QN catalog, "and remember being amazed that each of those tiny patches is a suggestion of a US flag, of red/white striped fabric with a tiny little piece of navy fabric in the top LH corner of each.  You had several different red/white striped fabrics, and I think each piece was double sided?  I didn't remember that the final row was incomplete... and I can't even wrap my mind about how you made that!"

She's right, each of the thousands of flags is a little quilt, made with red/white stripes on the front, plain green denim on the back, and a lot of stitching.  I had found a bunch of different R/W striped fabrics, and a bunch of different navy fabrics with little white stars or dots or random speck patterns to simulate the union of the flag.  And I had also bought a yard of an old Nancy Crow fabric with actual tiny flags to accurate scale (and made my homemade flags in the same size).  

The final column of the quilt was incomplete because the quilt marks the number of US troops who died in Iraq.  The count starts at our invasion in March 2003 and ends on Memorial Day 2008 -- 4,083.  All the columns had 70 flags except the last one, with only 23.

How I made that -- yes, it's hard to imagine the process.  It took me several "postage stamp" quilts to work out a process, and if you're interested, here's how I do it.  But after you've figured that out, it's just a case of sewing, sewing, sewing, sewing.  As I was trying to finish this quilt in the summer of 2008, I realized one day that my right knee was extremely unhappy.  Who knew that the sewing machine foot pedal was enough work to cause repetitive stress injury?  I finished the quilt with my left foot on the pedal (surprisingly difficult) and the knee rested up to normal, so a happy ending.

Thanks, Alison, for prompting my walk down memory lane -- and congratulations on your QN triumph!   

Form, Not Function 4 -- the Quilt National connection

When FNF was started, the show ran early in the year, but after a while the Carnegie Center decided to change the date.  Winter weather made faraway visitors think twice about driving, and the entry process was too close to the holidays.  So the show tried several different schedules -- February, March, April, July, May.  After visiting Quilt National several years ago, the museum director and curator thought it would be a good idea to overlap FNF's dates so people might be able to see both shows in a single road trip.

This year, there are many overlaps between the two shows, and not just in scheduling.

- Both shows opened on May 24. 

- Judy Kirpich, who was one of the QN jurors, won best in show at FNF.  (Judy also won a big prize at FNF in 2013.)



Judy Kirpich, Circles No. 6, FNF 2013

- Arturo Alonzo Sandoval's quilt Pattern Fusion No. 18: Motherboard 9, won a big prize at FNF.  Meanwhile, a quilt that looks like its twin brother, Pattern Fusion No. 16: Motherboard, won a big prize at QN.  (click here and scroll down a bit to see it)

- Margaret Black, whose quilt Curb Appeal 6 was a prizewinner at FNF, had the best in show quilt at the last QN two years ago, even though I wouldn't have known these two works came from the same artist had I simply seen them both on a wall.  (click here to see it)

I haven't had a chance to see Quilt National yet this year, although I hope to do so in July en route to a family reunion.  There may be other overlaps and cosmic coincidences yet to be discovered; if I find some, I'll let you know!

FNF is on display through July 20 at the Carnegie Center for Art and History, 201 E. Spring Street in New Albany IN, just across the river from Louisville.  Quilt National is on display through September 2 at the Dairy Barn in Athens OH.

Crabby about SAQA

I feel guilty about being crabby twice in one week, especially when it's Christmas and I'm feeling generally cheerful and happy.

And I feel guilty about being crabby about SAQA, which just a few days ago did me the honor of including my refugee quilt people in its new exhibit, "Forced to Flee."

But I'm going to do it anyway.

Entropy -- in QN'15 and now in a new SAQA book

Almost two years ago I was invited to have a quilt included in a SAQA book "that compiles the significant art quilts and artists from the 1960's to today."  I sent off my images, signed the permission form, and forgot all about it.  This week I happened to search my email inbox for "SAQA" because I needed to confirm the info about the "Forced to Flee" show, and there at the top of the list was this very old email.  Hmmm -- did the book ever get made?

I went to the SAQA website and found that sure enough, it came out six weeks ago under the title "Art Quilts Unfolding" and is available for $49 through the SAQA store.

I was surprised (a) that I had not received an announcement that the book was published, and (b) that I had not been sent a copy.  I've had my work published in many different books and magazines and it is standard practice to send a complimentary copy, especially when the publisher did not pay anything for the rights.

I wrote the SAQA staffer in charge of the project and asked if copies were going to be sent to the artists, and the response was NO.

I don't know if this chintzy decision was made by the publisher, or by SAQA, or both in concert, but I think it was a bad one.

SAQA makes a LOT of money off its publications, which are made possible by the cooperation of us artists who graciously provide images, sit for interviews, lend our quilts to tour for years, and in the case of juried shows, pay entry fees.  Yes, it's a nice ego trip to see our quilts in a book, but since we've done our part for free, the least they could do is send us a copy.

There's always a lot of chatter and angst on the SAQA email list over copyright, with people in a flutter over how much they should be paid if their quilt is reproduced on a CD album cover or a fundraising brochure or the side of a barn.  Usually the consensus is "we deserve to be paid!!!"  "we are professional artists!!!"  "we shouldn't give our work away!!!"  "people should take art quilters seriously!!!!!"

Seems like the shoemaker's children when SAQA avails itself of free publication rights to its own artist/members' work and can't even send us a copy of the publication.

What do you think?

UPDATE:  After I complained to Martha Sielman, executive director of SAQA, I got this response:

Maybe when SAQA negotiated the deal with Schiffer Publishing they should have put free books into the agreement.  Just my two cents worth.

Because it feels so good when I stop...

It's Quilt National entry time again.  Already I've had four friends call or email for advice and/or commiseration -- not about their quilts but about the entry.  So I planned my afternoon around the process.  I am no newcomer to online entries so I do the regular preparation.  I get all the images properly sized and named and in a separate folder on my computer.  I find the list of things the system is going to ask for and type them out in a Word document so I can copy instead of type into the actual form.  I get my credit card.  This should not be such a big deal.

Well, I'll spare you most of the gory details and just give the highlights.  I realize that I've written pretty much the same damn rant twice before, after entering QN '13 and QN '15.  The same dumb features of the entry form, the same dumb password woes (yes, Virginia, you should start entering before lunch, because you know for sure that you have forgotten the password you gave two years ago and will have to wait for them to send you a new one which takes about a meal's worth of time to show up).  The same dumb system where you do entry #1, proceed through credit card checkout, and then return to do entries #2 and #3.

They have fixed a couple of things.  Now you don't have to type in the info like "Have you exhibited in any previous Quilt National?" three times; you can click here and everything you typed in for the first entry will be copied into the new form.  You still do have to type in the materials and techniques twice for each quilt, once on the full view page and once on the detail page.  And they still ask you for the month of completion, which I suspect 75% of people will make up rather than try to reconstruct from their work logs.

Something new: "Brief History of Exhibition and Publication.  Please indicate any public exposure for your work as an artist.  This includes shows and exhibitions as well as publications."  I think they allowed 500 characters in the little box, so yes, they do mean brief.  What are you supposed to put there?  I was passive/aggressively brief, told them a couple of big shows and then said "numerous shows and publications."  I wonder what they are going to do with this info.

don't you love it when the death icon shows up with no clue as to why the system is unhappy?  it only took me three or four minutes to figure out what it wanted

I had two klong moments, one where things came out right by accident, one where they didn't but I hope it won't be fatal.  First the good news: I didn't realize until after I had hit the submit button for entry #1 that they had never asked for my name on the entry form!  Of course they did on the credit card page, but there they wanted the name on the credit card.  As it turns out, the name on my credit card is the name I want my work exhibited under, but I bet that isn't the case for many people.  I'm sure you could get this kind of thing straightened out eventually before the catalog gets published, but why don't they ask for your name to begin with?

Now the (maybe) bad news: You upload your image, which is pre-named something like "fading_59-x-99_full" and when you come to the page where you're supposed to fill in info about the quilt, the name of the image pops up automatically in the "Title" box.  I stupidly went on to the second box and proceeded down the page, without erasing "fading_59-x-99_full" and typing in "Fading".  I realized my error only after I had submitted entry #1 and proceeded to #2, at which point it was too late to go back and fix #1.

Yes, I was stupid.  But yes, the entry system was stupid too -- why did it choose to autofill that box, knowing it was going to come up wrong, instead of just leaving it blank for me to fill in correctly?  I hope that if this quilt gets into the show somebody will notice that "fading_59-x-99_full" isn't your typical quilt title, and call me up for clarification, but again, why not set up a process that avoids such problems?

I'm not the dullest needle in the pincushion, and if I have so many frustrations I bet a lot of other people do too.  I say it every time, and I'll say it again -- why don't show organizers have somebody sit down and pretend to fill out the entry form before they open for business?  And then why don't they fix some of these glitches and stupidities?  Wouldn't it be nice if your customers would be able to write blog posts about how easily they did their online entry?

The last gasp

I hung what I'm calling "Quilt National entry #1" on the wall in my front hallway in mid-April and it does make a dramatic statement.  Actually two dramatic statements: first, "I'm knocking your socks off!!!!" and second, "I sure don't hang straight."

Ever since, I have been hearing both those statements every time I walk by, and avoiding the issue of the second one.  Meanwhile I sewed Quilt National #2 and Quilt National #3.  Then to further postpone the inevitable, I sewed some workshop samples, and dove into my back storage room to go through boxes.  I found at least a cubic yard of stuff to give away or throw away; I unpacked, sorted, catalogued and repacked a half dozen boxes of stuff; I piled stuff all over my worktable for subsequent sorting, cataloguing and repacking.  I watched some Olympics.  I mended some pants.  I read books.

But yesterday I couldn't avoid it any longer.  I scheduled my date with the photographer for next week, took #1 off the wall and tried to figure out how to make it hang straight.

Laying it out flat on my worktable was out of the question; the table isn't really big enough, even if it hadn't by now been piled with stuff two feet thick.  Probably not having a big enough work surface was the reason why the quilt went together poorly the first time.  My living room floor turned out to be an excellent substitute, since its straight boards make a working grid. (No wonder it didn't hang straight -- notice all those ripples on the left-hand white stripe?)

Unfortunately then I had to get down there on the floor to work, which I probably could have done gracefully, easily and painlessly twenty years ago but sure can't any more.  I got a little stool to sit on, in lieu of kneeling or sitting on the floor.  And I got a chair to lean on to help me get onto and off of the stool. I didn't know whether to feel pathetically helpless or extraordinarily comical.  Probably should have had somebody shoot video and go viral on YouTube.

Simply cutting the threads that held the white stripes to the red stripes made a huge difference, and cutting some slits into the white to hike up the right side was even better.  But how to pin them together securely enough to hold up for the sewing machine without crawling all over the quilt?

Aha -- an idea.  I decided to take the quilt to the photographer without totally sewing it back together first along the verticals.  It will hang straight from its rod for the shoot, and then I will leave it up on his wall while I pin the bejesus out of it and take it home for its final stitches.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Finished!!

Faithful readers may recall that I've been working on my three entries for Quilt National since early spring, and that all three are American flags in varying degrees of attenuation.  I am thrilled to report that I have finished the third quilt, and after a bit of remedial stitching on the first one to make it hang better, I will be ready for photography.  And practically a month ahead of the September 1 entry deadline!

Here is #3 on the living room floor, the only horizontal surface in the house big enough to hold it.

All three of the flag quilts were exercises in using leftovers.  The ingredient list includes:

- a red blouse, almost sewed 25 years ago but never completed
- many pairs of blue jeans, contributed by members of my local fiber and textile art group
- an old white lab coat, contributed by my art pal Paula (snatched from her doctor husband)
- an old huck towel, with holes, contributed by my art pal Marti
- a piece of the ancient linen purchased in Europe by my art pal Joanne who graciously shared her treasure with me
- all the leftover bits of batting from years and years of quilts, some pieces almost big enough for a small quilt, others as small as an inch or two wide
- all kinds of fabric, acquired god knows how or when, that weren't worthy of staying in my stash
- red and white tulle from my stash
- various pieced samples, made by me or others, that never graduated to being used in a finished quilt
- an old patchwork pillow, made in 1971 and used so hard it wasn't fit for anything; I took it apart and discovered that it had been foundation-pieced onto a white dish towel, which became a white stripe
- leftover bits of white fabric trimmed from various projects over the decades and never thrown away
- shiny polyester thread left over from last year's Mending Project at our local museum, contributed by my art pal Ramona, who works at the museum and couldn't bear to throw the stuff away
- many, many, many spools of my own leftover thread, much of it so old that the quilt police would tell you never to sew with it.

Here's what the back of quilt #2 looks like, with all those leftovers:

Here's what I purchased new for the three quilts:

- a yard each of red and blue tulle
- a spool of off-white thread

I am sorry to report that I also bought four spools of blue thread at a clearance sale, thinking I would use them on the third quilt, but I didn't like the way they looked and never used them.  So I guess I'm a good ten bucks in the hole on this project.

The second quilt is finished

Fittingly, I finished my second big flag quilt on Memorial Day!  This is going to be a Quilt National entry so I won't show you the whole thing, but here it is awaiting its next-to-last seam, joining the blue union to the seven short stripes.

I have been constructing this quilt in modules, quilting them densely, then butting the edges and sewing them together into larger and larger expanses.  I have been very pleased with this method of working because until the very end there has been no physical stress.  Quilting in an eighth-inch grid would be horrible if not impossible on a huge quilt, but when you're only doing a piece the size of a placemat it's child's play (in fact, my 5-year-old grandson quilt helped quilt on one of the panels).

I knew there would be a day of reckoning when it came time to sew the last pieces together and feared that the last seams would be hard to do, but I decided to play Scarlett O'Hara and worry about that when it came.  So yesterday it came.  The next-to-last seam was fairly simple, although it went slowly as I had to shift the rolled-up bundle across my shoulder a few inches at a time.

For the last seam, horizontally across the quilt right under the blue union, I decided I needed help and enlisted my husband to stand behind me and hold the rolled-up quilt, feeding it gradually onto and over my shoulder as I sewed.  (Behind the sewing machine, the quilt was supported by a card table so it didn't drag.)  What a difference that made!  And when you have only one seam that needs a helper, you can probably bribe a helper into helping. He probably wouldn't have agreed to hold my work for 25 hours or 40 hours or however long it takes to
quilt a huge piece, although it would certainly have made those huge quilts of the past a lot easier.  This one is 98 x 59 inches, by the way.

So I am feeling rather giddy right now.  I'll have a week of vacation, going to Auburn NY for the opening of the Surface Design Association show at the Schweinfurth Art Center on Friday.  Then when I get home, on to flag #3.  

Quilt National -- the rules

Quilt National '15

In the last couple of days the rules for Quilt National '17 have appeared on their website, and I checked to see what if anything had changed since last time around.

First, the good news: the ban on any kind of color correction or other photo enhancement has disappeared.  Personally I never thought about this rule, since I didn't know how to do photo enhancement until quite recently and my regular photographer, George Plager, does such a good job that the photos always look like the quilts.  But some of my friends who are serious photo wonks will be happy to see this rule change.

And I think the notorious virginity rule has been greatly modified!  You may recall that in past QNs it has been verboten for a quilt to have appeared anywhere on the internet except for the artist's own website (or presumably, blog).  That means if you put your quilt on Facebook or Pinterest, or if somebody grabbed the image from your website and posted it on their own blog or site, it couldn't be in QN.  As a result, serious quilters have become paranoid about showing photos of anything they thought might possibly turn into a QN entry.

But a close reading of the new rules finds no mention of the internet!!  They still require print and show virginity -- no appearance in "an American publication that has national or international distribution; this restriction includes SAQA publications" or in "an International or American fiber arts exhibition" before the QN opening next May.  If I'm reading it right, I think this is an excellent change, getting rid of an overly strict and punitive rule.

Now the bad news: first, the deadline is earlier than it has been in the past -- September 1 compared to mid-September in all the years I recall.  I know QN needs a long lead time because of its practice of re-photographing all the quilts for its beautiful catalog, but this change doesn't affect the lead time; the notification will occur on October 6, compared to October 7 last time around.  All it does is give the jurors two more weeks to do their work.

Next, the age limit on entries has apparently been cut in half (full disclosure: I don't have a copy of previous years' rules to compare with the new ones, but I have spent enough time angsting over QN entries that I'm pretty sure I remember correctly).  Quilts must have been finished since September 1, 2015 -- in other words, less than one year old.  If I'm not mistaken, it always used to be two years.

So if you got cracking immediately after the entry deadline for the last QN, and made a great quilt last spring or summer, it's not eligible for this QN.  Which seems kind of silly -- it wasn't eligible for the last QN, and not eligible for this one either?  Strikes me that this rule will only encourage people to fib about when they finished their quilts.  (One reason why I never sew the sleeves on quilts until they're on their way to a show -- I can testify honestly in court that I just finished the quilt last week!!)  I think that in the eternal quest for NEW WORK they've gone too far with this rule.

And another piece of news that annoys me is that the entry cost has gone up.  Well, actually I'm not upset that the cost has gone up, but because of the way they chose to announce it.  In fact, as I look back in my checkbook I see that QN's cost has been on the low side ever since I have been entering  -- $25 in 2002 and 2004, $35 from 2006 to 2012, then up to $45 last time around.  Compared to $75 at Visions, QN has been a bargain.

But get this -- this year it's "entry fee of $45.00 plus a $10.00 processing fee."  Why this elaborate description?  Do they think we won't notice the extra ten bucks?  Is it so they can testify in court that the entry fee didn't go up?  Be honest, folks -- I don't think we'll begrudge you the money, but I do begrudge the obfuscation.

Quilt National 12 -- best in show

I'm getting tired of writing about Quilt National so I'll wind up this extended series of reviews with the best in show quilt.  I've been following Karen Schulz's work for some time, as she has been a regular in Form, Not Function, my local show.  And I confess that I liked the quilts I saw at FNF better than the one I saw at QN.

Karen Schulz, Girl in the City with Blue Hair, best in show, QN '15 (detail below)

Karen Schulz, Stonehenge-ish, FNF 2014 (detail below)

Karen Schulz, Improvisation: Two Circles, FNF 2015 

She says in her QN artist statement, "My work is primarily concerned with the formal considerations of composition.  The quilted line and the thicker couched line, both an integral part of my current efforts, grow out of the underlying structure."

In each of the three works, the composition is strong and striking; the piecing and quilting on all three works are impeccable.  But for me, the more austere color palette of the QN piece takes away from its overall impact.  

What do you think?

Quilt National 11 -- inside out

How interesting that two quilts in QN '15, taking almost the identical approach, were both from
German-speaking Europe.

Inge Hueber, Colourscape 1 (detail below)

Beatrice Lanter, hinten VII, orange (detail below)

Not sure this technique is as mind-boggling as it was twenty years ago, but still an interesting twist on the traditional pieced quilt.  Both artists are members of the obsessive-compulsive school of quiltmaking, with their individual pieces less than an inch across, and you have to admire the concentration it took to complete these rather large quilts.

I'll be a party-pooper and say that I might like to see what the other side of these quilts look like.  Also I'm sorry I didn't illegally peek at the back to see how these were quilted.

Quilt National 10 -- more pieced quilts

Here are some more pieced quilts that I loved in QN '15.

Maria Shell, To Agnes Martin, With Color

Maria has made an impressive body of work out of the nine-patch, usually in its more complicated variations.  This one is the minimalist version and stunning in its simplicity.

Bonnie Bucknam, Estuary: Anaheim Back Bay




























Bonnie is no stranger to QN, having won best in show four years ago.  This year's piece is smaller than she has typically worked in the past, and came about sort of by accident.  She needed a third piece to round out her QN entry and as the entry deadline approached, she hauled out her box of partial tops that for some reason had never been finished.  She sliced up two of them and combined them into this composition -- good enough to get into the show, and an intriguing new dimension to her long string of geology-themed quilts.

Gail Baar, Color Form 71

I've been privileged to see Gail's work for several years in person, as she has been a regular exhibitor in Form, Not Function, my local quilt art show.  Everything I've seen of hers in past years has been a lot smaller than her QN piece, and I think the big jump in size has been a very good idea.

Yasuko Saito, Movement #71 (detail below)

What is it with the number 71?  Maybe it's this year's good luck number.  I loved this work enough to argue for it to be best in show, until I got up close and looked at the quilting.

Somehow the swirly floral designs, which were used in most of the quilt, didn't seem to match the straight lines of the piecing.  I think it's always tricky to pair curves with straight lines (no matter which is the composition and which is the quilting) and don't think this one hit the mark.  But just stand back and fall in love!

Quilt National 9 -- pieced quilts

Let's talk about pieced quilts.  Two years ago I was seriously disappointed to see so few pieced quilts at QN '13 -- and by that I don't mean any quilts with some seams down the middle, but quilts that used piecing of different fabrics to achieve their composition and design.  Last time around I counted all of two quilts by this definition in the show, and ranted about it.  But any disproportionate presence or absence in a given show is likely to go away in the next show when you get different jurors and a different entry pool.  And I am delighted to report that those of us who practice piecing had a good day in the sun at QN '15.

Let me define "pieced quilts" even more narrowly: those that not only rely upon the juxtaposition of different fabrics to achieve their composition, but those that follow the traditional rules of quilting: neatly finished seams with no raw edges.  There were plenty of gorgeous examples of this genre.

First, I'm pleased to report that the Quilts Japan Prize, arguably a more valuable award than Best in Show, went to a pieced quilt.  I have an emotional attachment to this prize, having won it myself in 2009, and it was wonderful to have it go to a beautiful quilt made by a longtime friend of mine.

Judy Kirpich, Conflict #6/Mugging (detail below) 

I've loved Judy's work for a long time since I first met her in a workshop at Nancy Crow's barn, through her series of complicated pieced arcs and circles and now into her newer series of straight-line angst.  This quilt is about her daughter, who despite parental concern and dismay, moved to Mexico City, and then got slashed across the stomach in the course of being mugged.  (She recovered and is still in Mexico City.)

Beth Carney, Chasms 22 (detail below)

Beth is another artist whom I met many years ago at Nancy Crow's, and this series -- which apparently has been going on for quite a while, since she's up to 22 -- is a change from her previous work.

If you check out her website you can see how her meticulously pieced straight lines have gradually become meticulously pieced curves -- exactly the opposite of Judy Kirpich!  And check out her beautiful quilting.

I'll show you more pieced quilts tomorrow.

Quilt National 8 -- déjà vu

I haven't been to a lot of quilt shows recently, but several things at Quilt National seemed awfully familiar, despite the show's infamous virginity requirement that disqualifies almost any piece that has been shown on the internet or in the flesh.  In the three prominent shows that I've attended in the last year -- two years' worth of Form, Not Function at the Carnegie in New Albany IN and one year of Quilts=Art=Quilts at the Schweinfurth in Auburb NY -- I had seen not these exact quilts, of course, but their fraternal twins.  So I'll show you both versions!

I'll start with Kit Vincent; when I was a juror/judge at Q=A=Q last year I gave her quilt best in show -- so it was fun to meet its twin sister!

Kit Vincent, Chaos: the butterfly effect  (best in show, Quilts=Art=Quilts 2014)

Kit Vincent, Chaos 3 (Domini McCarthy Award, Quilt National '15) (detail below)

I have to apologize again for the photo -- the new lighting at the Dairy Barn, in which a single spotlight is focused on the center of each quilt, leaving the edges in shadow, is really awful for seeing the quilts, let alone taking decent pictures.  Imagine Kit's QN piece with the value distribution of the Q=A=Q piece and you'll have a better idea.  Or even better, pop for a QN catalog.

Next, a very different set of twins.

Deidre Adams, the proper means of investigating truth (Award of Excellence, Form, Not Function 2014)

Deidre Adams, disruption (QN '15) (detail below)

Both pieces are complicated constructions made from layers and layers of fabric and paper, machine stitched and cut away.

Kathleen Probst, Dipped Dimension (juror's choice, Q=A=Q 2014)

Kathleen Probst, Blue Veil (Cathy Rasmussen Emerging Artist Memorial Award, QN '15)

And here's the older brother of this set of twins:

Kathleen Probst, Alinea #10 (Form, Not Function 2015)

At first glance, it doesn't seem related, but then you notice the "H" shape of opposing ovals and realize that she's using the same motif, just pared down a lot.

If I had to find a moral in this story, it is that serious artists work in series, sometimes even making pieces that seem barely different from those that went before.  But it's through this kind of rigorous exploration of a theme or process that the work gets better.

Also that it's fun to go to the better quilt shows, notice the artists who keep making good work and start to follow their growth.

The Quilt National Catalog

I've been writing about Quilt National for a couple of weeks now with words and pictures of the quilts that have impressed me.  Yesterday Sarah Ann Smith left a comment on one of the earlier posts that I thought deserved a reply that more people would read, so I'm doing this as a regular post instead of a comment.

She wrote:  "I am glad to see the photos you have posted here.  Honestly, QN has a reputation for a number of things (some great, some not so much), and it might do well to share more of the works online once it has debuted -- it would counter some of the misconceptions (including mine) and perhaps encourage those of us who only see the pictures of the winning quilts to enter.  A larger field of entries will only make for an even better exhibit.

"As for the catalog, is it now professionally photographed?  A few years ago the photos were deemed by many who were in the exhibit to be poor -- lighting/printing was way off in color and value; it may have been printing that was to blame -- but a shame that there was no opportunity to review the galleys and FIX the poor images.  Since most of the works I've seen haven't been my cup of tea, I haven't shelled out the $$ to order the catalog, especially if it isn't well printed.  It sounds like this year it is improved?  I sure hope so!"

A lot of thought is provoked by this comment.  First off, I agree that simply looking at the photos of the winning quilts may give a skewed impression of the whole show.  Yes, there were only three representational quilts among the 14 winners, but even that doesn't indicate a juror bias, since two of the awards are given simply because the makers entered QN unsuccessfully for the greatest number of times before being accepted.  It might be nice if all the quilts were shown online, but that would certainly cannibalize sales of the catalog and you can understand why the Dairy Barn is hesitant to do that.

Yes, the catalog is professionally photographed -- and I believe it has been so for many, many years.  I was first accepted to the show in 2003 and we have always had to send in the quilts in October, within weeks of the acceptance letter, so they could be shot for the catalog.  I know that some quilts have had lousy images in past catalogs.  I've attended every QN for at least 20 years, and my typical routine was always to buy a catalog, then go around the gallery annotating it.  Many of my old books have marginal notes such as "photo is way too dark" or "not really pink, more red-orange."

I don't know why they weren't able to get better color fidelity in the past, but perhaps the fact that they shot the photos, then sent most of the quilts back to the makers for six months (there is no storage space at the Dairy Barn) made it impossible to compare proofs to the actual artwork.  (I know, you should shoot photos with a color standard card at the side...)  And the fact that all pre-press work is done on computer these days adds another dimension for potential error.

I went to my bookshelf and discovered that I own every QN catalog since 1983.  From 83 to 89 they were printed by Schiffer; in 1991 and 93 by Threads; from 1995 to 2011 by Lark Books; in 2013 by Dragon Threads; and this year it is self-published by the Dairy Barn.

This year I didn't notice any photo in the catalog that seemed off.  In fact, the catalog has better views than you'll get in person at the Dairy Barn, thanks to the unfortunate new lighting system that focuses a small pool of very bright light at the center of each quilt, leaving the edges in shadow.  The photos I took and am posting are nothing to write home about, for that reason.  So I will particularly recommend that you buy a catalog.  The only thing I might quibble with is that this year's book has no detail shots, so you do miss out on some of the subtler aspects.

As you can tell by my past purchasing habits, I'm a huge believer in buying the QN catalog.  I think that any serious participant in or observer of the art quilt scene should keep up with what goes on in this important show, for the same reason that anybody in the movie biz needs to pay attention to the Academy Awards.  You may not like the particular winners from a given year, but you do need to be aware of what's going on in your chosen field.

Quilt National 7 -- hand stitching

Another "trend" that was quite apparent at Quilt National has been building for a while, the spectacular use of hand stitching, both as quilting and as design.

I'll start with the winner of the Lynn Goodwin Borgman Award for Surface Design.  This award has always gone to some fabulous dye job, and I was a little taken aback to find it given this year to a quilt where almost the entire design was made by hand stitching.  But after some thought I decided that stitching can be surface design too (I guess...).

Barbara Watler, Red Sun at Night (detail below)

The red sun is a piece of fabric laid over the background fabric, under the stitching; everything else is perle cotton!  I particularly liked the not-immediately-apparent motif of the three sails and the water reflecting the sunset: simple and elegant.

Olga Norris, Crowded (detail below)

Tiny hand quilting stitches outline the printed figures and add texture to a loosely sketched motif.

Susann Heymann, One Way or Another  (detail below)

Quilting stitches in different sizes add design lines as well as texture.

Helen Geglio, Femoral Fracture: A Fall (detail below)

This started with a pair of pants, taken apart, then embellished with dense hand embroidery.

Judy Langille, Nocturnus IV (detail below)

A change from the screenprinted quilts that Langille made for many years, this one is a fabric collage in which tiny white french knots hold the layers together.  I love the minimalism -- even the knots are small and unassuming instead of fat and assertive.

Rosalie Dace, Here and Now (detail below)

Probably the most exuberant and spontaneous hand stitching was done by one of the jurors; Dace's quilt features a wild variety of stitches and threads holding down and enhancing her pieced and appliqued fabrics,  It made me want to jump around and dance!