Virtual Quilt Festival, VQF, was held December 3-5, 2020 instead of the usual Festival in Houston. I was honored to have a Special Exhibit of my life's work, 25 of my quilts from the earliest to most recent. It was entitled My Joyful Journey.
Attendance for VQF was excellent but not the 55,000 or so who would have attended in person. And, please note, if you attended, all 30 of the Special Exhibits remain available to you until March 6, 2021. It is too late to enroll but those who did enroll have plenty of time to enjoy all the quilts still.
For the next few months I will show the quilts here for you to see. Here is a screenshot of the opening frame of My Joyful Journey:
The quilts will be presented here in chronological order, not the way they were shown in the Gallery. I begin with the oldest, but not my first quilt.
QUILT #1: Christmas Around the Country, 51" x 73", machine pieced and quilted, 1989:
The Story: I won 10 Fan blocks at a guild swap raffle shortly after joining the guild in 1988. Making 3 more blocks allowed me to use the Garden Maze setting. Guild members were surprised when I showed the quilt top at the very next meeting--no one had ever made a quilt from the blocks although the swaps had been going on for 2 years.
I designed the quilting motifs and cut a template from freezer paper and cardboard--that's what we did in 1989 if we had no template plastic. I still have that stencil in case I might use it again someday:
Let's quilt.
Barbara
Greetings from Washington state.
ReplyDeleteYour "Christmas around the Country" quilt makes me smile. I took up quilting in 1988 after many years of garment making. (Were you a caregiver too?) We've come a long way since that time. Glue paper to cardboard, and sandpaper to cardboard, trace, cut with scissors as the rotary cutter was just being introduced.
We've come a long way!
No, I was a young mother then but had been sewing clothes for 20 years at that point. The rotary cutter changed everything, just like the sewing machine did 100 years before.
DeleteWhat a lovely quilt. Your quilting is so intricate and perfect.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Danica.
DeleteI don't recall seeing fan blocks set in the Garden Maze before. Very clever--it is a totally different look from what I am used to with the fans.
ReplyDeleteThat is pretty funny that no one had made a quilt from the swap blocks in the previous 2 years. It might be fun to have a guild show of quilts strictly from swap blocks. I wonder how many would get made for that?
congratulations. It was a wonderful exhibit! I'm just sorry I didn't see it in person as planned.
ReplyDeleteThat is about the time I started being interested in quilt making. I checked out every book at the local library on making quilts, old books from the '70's and earlier! Very HIPPIE styled some of them. SEW much has changed since then!
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