"Not Fade Away 2015: Sharing Quilt Stories In The Digital Age"

I'm sharing the press release for the upcoming event, "Not Fade Away":  Sharing Quilt Stories In The Digital Age".  I'll be offering a labeling workshop (times two!) with Michele Muska and would love to see you there!  And to sweeten the deal:  "Sacred Threads", which debuts on July 10th at the same location as the conference, will be open for attendees to visit!

Read on......

Quilt history isn't over. Every time a new quilt is made, another chapter of quilt history is written -- or at least it should be. The nonprofit Quilt Alliance teaches quiltmakers, quilt collectors and quilt lovers everywhere how to record history as it happens.

This summer, the Alliance will conduct its second conference on the oral history of quilts, full of up-to-the-minute techniques and inspiring projects. Not Fade Away: Sharing Quilt Stories in the Digital Age will be held on Saturday, July 18 in Herndon, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. The conference, sponsored by eQuilter.com, Sacred Threads and the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, will feature lectures, workshops, networking opportunities and more. 

Attendees from our 2013 Not Fade Away conference said: 

"Information shared, inspiration invoked, comfort and ease of facilities all came together."

"Combining the conference with a quilt show was a wonderful idea and helped my decision to attend."

"I loved the entire conference. This was the first Quilt Alliance conference that I have attended, and I was blown away by the professionalism and collegial atmosphere. The presentations were top-knotch and I will definitely attend other QA events when I am able to."

"My experience was outstanding! I thought the facilities were ideal, the staff was most gracious & cordial, the online registration process was easy & was handled beautifully."

This year's conference features a packed day-long program on Saturday, July 18, as well as an optional Friday night program. A two-day pass to the conference costs $75 for Quilt Alliance members and $90 for non-members (annual membership starts at $25/year). One-day passes are also available, as well as packages that include a fundraising dinner on Saturday evening.

A ticket to Friday evening's program includes a welcome mixer with appetizers and non-alcoholic drinks, a preview of the Sacred Threads exhibition, and an exciting night of video previews and a special presentation of the work of Donna Sue Groves, founder of the first Quilt Barn Trail in Adams County, Ohio. Filmmaker Julianne Donofrio will preview her film, Pieced Together and answer questions about how she put together funding for this documentary about "How quilt square trails changed America - and saved Donna Sue's life after job loss and breast cancer."

Admission to Saturday's full day program includes coffee and danish breakfast, a boxed lunch, and a full day of workshops, discussions and informal networking sessions on oral history and documentation techniques, challenges and successes. Conference registration includes one-day admission to Sacred Threads, an international exhibition of quilts exploring themes of spirituality, joy, inspiration, peace/brotherhood, grief and healing.

  

Marin Hanson will give the keynote address "One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts: Commemorating and Documenting Adoptions from China" about the tradition of American families making a special kind of quilt to celebrate and commemorate their children's adoption from China.

Shoshana (on left) and Anna (on right) Levin showing off their One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts made by their mom, Michele Levin. Photo courtesy Michele Levin.

Marin Hanson

 Marin Hanson is the Curator of Exhibitions at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum (IQSCM) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). She holds undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Northern Illinois University and earned her MA in museum studies and textile history with a quilt studies emphasis from UNL. Marin has served on the board of the Quilt Alliance since 2009.

Saturday's program will also include a panel discussion titled 

Using the Family Tree to Piece Together the Story of a Quilt. 

Panelists include Gloria Comstock, Michelle Flamer, Kyra Hicks, Mary Holton Robare and Mary Worrall.

The Alliance's newest video oral history project, Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! as well as the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project (launched in 1999), will also be demonstrated. Quiltmakers whose work will appear in the Sacred Threads Exhibition will be interviewed for this short-format video documentation project during the lunch break.

Conference attendees will choose two workshops from the following topics:

• Self-Publishing for Quilters with Kyra Hicks.
• Label It. Today! with Leslie Tucker Jenison and Michele Muska.
• Create Your Own Adventure: Using the Q.S.O.S. Project Database with Christine Humphrey
• How to Conduct Q.S.O.S. Interviews with Pauline Macaulay and Emma Parker 
• Untapping the records and resources of the Quilt Index with Mary Worrall
   

The conference will close on Saturday evening with a dinner to honor outgoing Quilt Alliance president Meg Cox at Amphora Diner Deluxe in Herndon. Meg will share both the story of her life with quilts and some of the most meaningful quilts in her collection, like the one pictured below made by Meg's mother, Jo Cox. 

Quilt Alliance President Meg Cox

Those unable to make the trip to Herndon for the Not Fade Away conference can attend virtually by purchasing a Not Fade Away Home Ticket, which will provide them with online access to video footage of the event after the conference closes. The cost of a Home Ticket is $15 for Quilt Alliance members and $20 for non-members.

Discounts for groups of ten or more are available. Contact Debby Josephs for more information at admin@quiltalliance.org or 828-251-7073.

Not Fade Away attendees can also take advantage of a Museum Bus Tour on Friday, July 17 (9:00 am - 5:00 pm). The tour will stop at three museums, and participants will get to see special exhibits at each, including the DAR Museum's "Eye on Elegance" show. This trip is offered by Sacred Threads and tickets are $75/person. Information and ticket sales for the bus tour can be found here: http://sacredthreadsquilts.com/html/bustour.html

The Not Fade Away conference is made possible by support from these generous sponsors:

 

Seating for the conference is limited so early registration is encouraged. Not Fade Away conference details and online registration can be found on the Quilt Alliance website here: http://www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/support/NFA2015tickets.php.  

Finding Artistic Balance Between Competence and Growth

Greetings!

I know I haven't written in a while.  I was away for two weeks in May studying at the Crow Timber Frame Barn.  Now that I am home I am working hard to empty my studio in preparation for some construction work.  More on that later....

I've been thinking about the yin/yang of working as an artist:  finding a balance between competence and comfort with a certain working style versus the need/desire to push outside of that style and deliberately challenge oneself in a new way.   Am I alone in thinking about this?  I've been feeling it for a couple of years.
It may have started when I found myself attracted to the idea of making larger work again.  I think my love for the Gee's Bend quilts coupled with the Modern Quilt movement got it going.  How can I combine my love of surface design with all this?  Where might it take me?
Interestingly, there are many people who were not terribly supportive of my plan to take this little side-trip in my work.  Why was I doing this?  What do I hope to accomplish?  What about my "other" work?
Well, what about it?
Does this exploration mean I'm abandoning the "art quilt"?
I'm writing this stuff because I wonder if I'm alone out there in these things.
Look, maybe I do have a split personality when it comes to the work I do.  I'm very comfortable with that.  I guess I must have a multiple personality disorder if we take painting and mixed media into account.
When it comes to quilts, I began as a traditional quilt maker.  I'm reminded of this as I clean out my studio to prepare for a major remodel of my wet space.  I'm finding many "artifacts" from my earlier work!  Not very prolific early on due to professional and family responsibilities, I began producing more work about 12 years ago when my family responsibilities changed.  Coupled with my passion for mark-making with dye and paint it seemed a natural fit to make art quilts.
Frankly, it still does.
I know that my work will not evolve unless I am in my studio making art a regular practice.  There is no substitute for just "doing the work": it is how the work evolves.  I have interests other than my textile work, but there is no question that the textile/surface design/quiltmaking work is the main focus of my artistic intent.  I love to paint, embroider, and do encaustic work (such a parallel to surface design work on cloth!).
 I had a desire to explore new territory in my quilt work.  I tell people I like to "poke a stick at myself" to see what shakes out.
I've been doing two new things this year:  I'm studying with Nancy Crow and I am trying to learn how to use a longarm machine.  So far both are challenging, and in a good way.

Here I am begin my critique, held at the end of week 2 in May.  I am pictured with a portion of the 

work I generated while there.  I worked very hard and put in long hours, as did all my fellow workshop participants.

In working with Nancy I am learning about figure and ground.  I'm beginning to view my improvisational freehand rotary cutting as my new form of line drawing.  I'm learning a new way to work with value as it relates to color.  I really can't explain how exciting all this is for me!

--------

And then there is the longarm learning curve.....!

Loading my first "solo" quilt on the Bernina Q24 longarm machine...

Some of my free motion quilting.

With the longarm I am learning an entirely new set of muscle memory.  I hope to become halfway competent at it because, as stated earlier, I am working larger.   I am weary of pushing large quilts through a domestic sewing machine.  I've done it many times, but my body is starting to resist the idea of it.  Since the quilt line is truly the third design element in this wonderful medium it seems to me that I should work to master a larger machine format.  I continue to hope that my million hours of free-motion quilting will work to my advantage as I surf this new learning curve.

These are my two newest artistic challenges.  I do not mean to imply that I have mastered my other artistic pursuits:  most of them continue to humble me on a regular basis!

I am interested in hearing what my reader have to say about this.  If you have a few minutes to comment, I'm "all ears".