this is not the Quilt National catalog

Structures #113 Award of Excellence Lisa Call
I took some photos of the Quilt National exhibit that I'd like to share here that give a different perspective than what will be available in the catalog. (fantastic though that catalog is) Structures #113 - detail of the machine quilting. Lisa's lines are less than 1/8" apart, and are beautifully neat. The 'work' in this piece is so intense, it carries the viewer into a different place. It's something that just doesn't show up in print. Also, the scale of the piece. Here is Lisa Call with her piece. We were invited to speak for two minutes about our work in a private showing with the other artists. Lisa said that as this series has evolved, she has used fewer and fewer lines, but that she spends more time deciding where to put each one. Ori-Kune 20 52" w x 41" h Sue Cavanaugh Lynn Goodwin Borgman Award for Surface Design I had some good visits with Sue and learned that she does most of her shibori stitching while standing up! She has produced another piece in the same series (Ori-Kume #22) that is 164" wide x 94" high!! That one is currently on display in Zanesville Ohio . In this detail you can see how the threads of the stitch resist shibori are left in and are in different colours. So smart. Also, you can see how it has been quilted with 20/2 spun silk thread - something that is not so evident in the catalog. In this overview you can see the huge scale of Eleanor McCain's 9 Patch Color Study 7, 110" x 109" on the left of the above photo. I have been following Eleonar's work for a while, and am moved by the way she uses the common nine patch to make crosses. In her two minutes, Eleanor told us how she like to connect to the history and tradition of America and common experience by using the nine patch, and that she uses the cross because it references both the vertical of the male and the horizontal of the female. Eleanor McCain was one of the jurors for this year's Quilt National.

I love the Quilt National catalogs and they are all in my book shelf, looked at many many times when I need to be re-inspired. Those catalogs have been my text books. What I want to say in this post is that the actual three dimensional pieces seen in real life are even more wonderful than their printed versions.