IQF Time Warp

So I realized I had never posted quilt photos from IQF Houston last November (welcome to school brain), and I started looking through them…and then I was thinking about what I actually SAW in Long Beach, and I think my tiny little brain just realized that we don’t actually see all the quilts in the show in Long Beach…that some only go to Houston.

Well, that sucks. I loved Houston last year, but it’s expensive and the timing sucks for a single mom with two kids who play soccer and who happens to be a schoolteacher, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to go again for a few years. So I guess that means I always miss out. Please don’t remind me that I don’t ever go to Quilt National or the Mancuso shows, so I always am missing out. I don’t want to be that enlightened until I get all the way through this cup of tea.

Anyway, so consider yourself in a time warp back to November, when the weather was not warping your brain so much (well, if you’re living here in San Diego, right now East County is a bit on the warm and humid side, but not really as bad as last year at this time, so I should shut up and stop complaining), and enjoy the quilts.

This is Stone II by Jean Wells Keenan, which was apparently inspired by a Rosalie Dace workshop.

The colors and use of the patterns in the fabric in this piece are really beautiful. Her website above has many more examples of her work.

If you know anything about Jamie Fingal, you’ll recognize her use of metal attachments in this quilt, Square Dance.

I stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out if it fit together in a different way, with all the squares lining up.

This is Swimmers’ Clock by Julie Duschack.

I have to say, I had to go check her website and google this piece to make sure I hadn’t photographed the wrong statement, because this doesn’t look like the work I associate with Duschack, but it’s hers. I liked the graphic quality and the balance in this piece.

This is Tanya Brown’s Siesta, which is much more amazing in real life (it’s bigger than I had expected).

I’m quite happy to let others do this kind of intensive threadwork, and it pays off in the texture of the wood and the raccoon.

This is The Fortune Teller, another piece by Sherry Kleinman.

It includes another painted figure with the 3D embellishments of the curtain around her.

Hollis Chatelain’s piece Innocence is large and bold, but what’s really amazing is in the quilting…

You can see shadows of it in the picture above, but she’s quilted faces of children into the larger face (as she dreamed the original image)…

There aren’t just a few faces…there are a ton of them.

This is Sticks and Stones 2, by Joan Frantz and Pat Cookson.

What’s interesting about this quilt is first of all how the reds make the whole thing feel like it’s leaning, but that Joan died in 2008 and this is one of her last quilts, and Pat finished the quilt for her. I started thinking about who might finish mine for me…if the top were done and all you had to do is quilt it (yes, Susan, I know you’d do it, but you’re older than I am…presumably I might outlive you…although Joan died early of ovarian cancer). Yes, this is a depressing topic…but something to think about.

Looking at all these, you might think I like bright colors…this is Judith and Bill Woodworth’s 3 Gs.

Judy designed and quilted it, and Bill painted it. I could see making this in commercial fabrics, but it’s actually a wholecloth quilt.

Inge Mardal and Steen Hougs painted and quilted this piece, Angling.

I love the cover picture of them on their website. Definitely watch and read the “About Us” section on their website. I’ve always wondered how two artists might work together to create one piece…they seem so calm and focused. I think I don’t have the right personality to be so calm while working with someone else.

I saw this one in Long Beach too, and almost took another photo of it, so it’s a keeper. This is Village in Galilee by Rachel Covo. (wow…Wordpress did it again…deleted a big part of the post when I published…what a weenie! Fixing it now…).

Covo talks about cloudless skies and the strong sun of the Mediterranean (reminds me of home). The colors and movement of this piece is what I liked.

It’s a Bodil Gardner piece, of course, featured many times on my blog. This is Tell Us a Story.

Gardner describes a mother telling stories to her children and the living room turning into Storyland (hence the sheep on the table). Gardner lives in Denmark, but not in the tiny bit of Denmark where I was this summer. If she had, I might have tracked her down and talked to her about her work (and asked to see her fabric stash). OK. No I wouldn’t. I’m really not a crazy stalker lady. Although I did see textile art this summer…I only went to places that we found in the arts booklet that was all over Skane in Sweden…so one would think they would expect me to show up, eh?

Another regular to my blog, Pamela Allen…but this piece is different from most of her other pieces…this is Water Garden in a Quasi-Egyptian Style…

It still uses the funky details of fabric that she uses, but it seems more graphic and stylized. Allen talks about Egyptian art shows all views; perspective is skewed so a person might be facing three different directions at once. She has used that technique with the water garden.

So that’s all I did today; I’ll do more tomorrow. I can only handle so much time-warping in one day, especially when WordPress keeps eating my words. It must have some serious indigestion.