Birmingham Videos Online – Part 2

This weekend I have a 2nd batch of videos up
from the Birmingham
Quilt Festival. Bonnie McCaffery and I met up to make several videos
about the art quilts and the artists at this big European quilt gathering.

eQuilter was the sponsor of the Pictorial Quilt category, and I was delighted
to interview the winner of the exhibit – Stephanie Crawford.

I've also posted my review of the Group Quilts in Birmingham, and a 2-part
video with the Dutch quilters who call themselves Wiolan.

There are 8 videos online now from Birmingham, and more on the way in the
coming week! Watch out for my interview with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably.

Due to new ownership, this year in Birmingham the names of the quilters were
posted next to their quilts. This may seem like a no-brainer, but previous to
this there was just a number next to the quilt, and you had to look up in the
show book to see the name of the quilter.

In this age of social media, and ever-evolving ways of online promotion, I
think it is fantastic that now the attendees (and fellow quilters) can
immediately see the quilt, identify the quilter, and share the image and name
online.

I was surprised when I went to the Canada quilt festival in May, that the still
were not allowing photos of the quilt exhibit. I think it is the only quilt
festival I have been to in many years, that was still forbidding photos of the
exhibit. They
graciously allowed me to come in and take photos to share with you, but I
hope next year you will open up the show for you to also share images of those
beautiful quilts.

The truth is – quilters LOVE to take photos and share their excitement with
each other online! I get a kick out of the Tokyo
Quilt Festival because there can be 10 people tightly clustered around a
quilt at one time, taking closeup photos of stitching details with their
smartphones.

The most important thing is that the name of the quilter always go out with the
image when sharing, so she or he gets credit. Those images can be reposted and
repinned hundreds or even thousands of times, so it is important that we
include that information from the start. On my photo page you will see
that I now make the image file name – the name of the quilter – so if someone
copies and saves the image it can carry the name of the quilter along.
Something to think about…

I am leaving for India in less than 2 weeks, so I am working on getting more Birmingham
quilt photos posted before taking off on my next adventure!