Fiberart Postcards ~ Best of Chicago Quilt Festival

Someone please knock a little sense into me if EVER I agree to teach at three back-to-back events again. Just ONE turns me into a zombie; just ONE leaves me a bit crabby, short of memory, emotional. THREE, without a good break between them, is just plain crazy-making. All I want to do, even now – a couple of days after returning home, is to take nap after nap and pet the cat. If my words don’t come out right today, you know the reason…

That said, let me share some photos from the Chicago Quilt Festival with you.


First, here are my dear bead/quilt friends, Susan and Phyllis, who helped me trudge the 300 mile-long walkways between our hotel and the convention center classrooms, carrying supplies and setting up after we arrived, and assisted as needed during each of my 4 classes and sampler lecture. They met years ago while working at the same quilt shop in TX. Now that Susan moved to CA, they get together once or twice a year to take classes and shop at conferences. I met them three years ago when they took a bead embroidery class from me. Since then, they’ve both been beading and sewing beads on quilts like crazy! This was the first time they changed roles from student to assistant, but underneath both roles, is a wonderful friendship that has developed since first we met. Without their help, I’d probably be in a hospital right now!

We had two brief periods of time to visit the vendors and exhibition area. For once, I mostly avoided the vendors and concentrated on the many fabulous exhibits of quilts. All were fascinating and amazing, but the most compelling to me was a small exhibit of fiber art postcards. They were framed in groups of 9 and behind glass, and thus very difficult to photograph. Here are a few of them:


This one, untitled by Ann Marie Cowley of Oregon, made my knees weak. The photo totally doesn’t do it justice… soft colors, silky texture… gentle, peaceful, joyous.


This one, “White Bridge” by Inge Reinholdt of Denmark, brought tears to my eyes, the spirituality of it. I tried to take the photo without a flash, but there wasn’t enough light, so you’ll have to ignore the big white splash. Check here to see other of Inge’s fabric postcards. Click to enlarge the ones you like best (well worth it!)


This one, “Tomatoes and Tithonia” by Virginia A. Spiegel, has such a lovely close-up and personal feel to it… a design sense to envy.


This one, “Prairie Evening” by Anne Dovel, pleases me because of the texture, lines and colors… it feels like a prairie under the spell of sunset.

In the past few years, “Fiberart for a Cause” has donated over $130,000 to the American Cancer Society. The sale of postcards this year contributed over $18,000 to that total.

On the back side of the postcard exhibit was an ATC wall, which constantly changed as people brought their cards to trade for ones already on the wall. Here is a picture showing just a small portion of the wall. I’d say there were 200 or more ATCs on the wall at any given time.


I've been thinking of making some ATCs, but after seeing the exhibits of postcards, I'm favoring the larger format (about double the size of ATCs).

In my next post, I’ll show pictures of and talk about the Journal Quilts Project exhibit, which was awesome again this year!

Now it’s time for another nap… z z z Z Z Z Z!