eQuilter Blog

In my Saturday night newsletter, I mentioned a
quilt in the
Birmingham Quilt Festival with a Scottish Thistle. Today I want to show you
a detail of that quilt, because of the amazing quilting in the background.

One of the trends we are seeing is tons of creative doodle-quilting in the
backgrounds of modern quilts. What might appear to be blank, or just negative
space in a quilt, turns out to be full
of unique machine-quilting upon closer inspection.

If you read my reviews from QuiltCon
(or read my article about Modern Quilts in the recent
issue of McCalls Quilting Magazine), you are aware that there has been an
upswing in younger quilters becoming very proficient on longarm machines. A lot
of the quilts at QuiltCon
were pieced by one person, and then quilted on a longarm by a second quilter.

This Scottish Thistle quilt was made by one person, and even though it is not
technically a modern quilt (it has an appliqued flower) there are elements of
modern quilting here. You can click through to my photo page to see
more detail shots, and an image of the whole (large!) quilt by Kay Bell.

The
most creative quilts come from those who don't follow the rules, but
explore the place in between the trends, the descriptive labels, and the latest
techniques or media. We see elements of old and new here, but in this
combination, we see something unique and fresh.

So the moral of the story is…don't look to others' guidelines and rules when
creating. Identify the trends and then break the rules. Make it beautiful or
make it edgy, as you wish, but make it your own and show off your talent in
your own way!

Our first few videos from Birmingham are going up tomorrow on our video page,
so keep an eye out for the first of several Birmingham video reviews and
interviews.

* The quilt detail above is from Kay Bell's quilt "Inner Circle, Flower of
Scotland", photographed at the Quilt Festival in Birmingham UK. *

This week I am writing to you from the
UK: I just finished a whirlwind 3 days at the Quilt Festival in Birmingham
(making several videos with Bonnie), and now I am in Scotland on a cross-country
tour.

Next year Scotland's citizens are going to vote on a referendum to secede. When
you are in Scotland and you hear about the history
between England and the
Highlanders, you can understand why some might want to withdraw back into
their own country.

On the other hand, as part of the United
Kingdom there are obvious benefits. That's why they are going to have a
vote, and nobody knows for sure what will be the result of the election.

It seems like in the quilting world, and in the larger world, people are
reevaluating their membership in larger groups. Some groups that have existed
for a long time, are breaking down, deconstructing, and/or reorganizing. I
always like to spot comparisons between the microcosm of the quilting world,
and the macrocosm of the larger global consciousness.

The Group Quilt category at the Birmingham show this year
seemed to be in a state of deconstruction and reorganization…in a good way.
It blew apart my preconceptions of "what is a group quilt" and gave
me quite a creative jolt. I mean… I
really thought I knew how to define a group quilt… but now I am working
with a blank slate.

Over the past two decades that I've been part of the quilting world, I've seen
quilters argue over the silliest things. They sometimes spend more time
debating "what is art?" and "what is a quilt?" than
creating in their studios. I have hoped for years that maybe we are progressing
beyond this, and the Birmingham Group Quilt category gives me hope!

I say this with tongue
in cheek of course. It is our nature to want to divide and conquer when a
category becomes too oversaturated. I remember when eQuilter was a relatively
new business, and I had to start dividing up some of our categories. What was
once one big flower category is now 4 flower categories, and a lot of thought
went into those divisions. First the Roses
had to secede from the Flower Union, then the remainders were split into Large
and Small
Flowers, and finally the stylized Pop and
Folk Art blossoms got a category of their own.

Curious about the Group Quilt category? Watch for new show reviews on our video page
in the next couple weeks! In the meantime, I'd like to invite you to put on
your brainstorming cap and think about all the ways a quilt could be divided up
amongst a group of quilters. I am seeing a lot of creative juice funneling into
group quilts around the world in the last year, and I think there is a
microcosm trend in quilts, that mirrors what is going on in the macrocosm.

What do you think?

Those of you who have older kids have probably
experienced "story fatigue" – when you tell a family legend
and they roll their eyes and start reciting the tale along with you.

But hey, some stories
are worth telling again and again. There are some very special memoirs
that are worth saving – whether it is writing it down, recording the verbal
storytelling, or filming
the storyteller.

A couple weeks ago I had the honor to interview Jinny
Beyer for the Quilters' 'Save Our Stories' project – the quilting world's
version of Story Corps. At the Not Fade Away conference, we recorded an interview
with Jinny that will be archived in the Library of Congress.

She talked about how she got into quilting, how the time she lived in India
had such
a profound effect on her color sense, and then she told the history of the
9/11-inspired quilt which was hanging as our backdrop. (photo above)

The last time I had seen Jinny was at the Australasian
Quilt Convention in Melbourne Australia
last year. I saw her very briefly because she was teaching, and as we parted I
said "We'll talk the next time I see you!" Little did I know that the
next time we spoke, I'd be interviewing her in front of a crowd!
Life as a traveling quilter can be funny like that…

Today was my last day before my big trip to the UK, and Sophie had an
appointment with her orthodontist. She found out today that it is time for her
to get braces,
so next week while I am at the Birmingham Quilt Festival, Paul will take Sophie
for her first prep appointment, and then the braces
go on when I return, 2 days before school
starts. That sounds like a story in the making, doesn't it?

I know many of you will be coming from all over the UK and Europe to the Birmingham
Festival of Quilts this week. I will be at these events, and hope to see
some of you there:

Thursday night – Mary Fisher dinner
Friday night – Fashion Show
Saturday night – Shakespeare in Stratford

Bonnie McCaffery and I will be filming
our videos at the show Friday and Saturday, so perhaps we'll see you on the
show floor? (You can see videos
from our previous years at the Birmingham show, on our video page.)

The first year I went, we photographed
the Tentmakers
of Cairo, and these quilts have gone on to wow quilters at Paducah and
other venues.

Have a great day!