International Quilt Festival – IQA Competition – Art – People, Portrtaits and Figures
November 17th, 2013
Another testament to the quality of the quilts in the IQA competition: Only one of the quilts shown below was a prize winner, but all of them them were pretty amazing!
Jenny Bowker currently hails from Garran, ACT, Australia. Her entry in the show is Margaret Rolfe – The Quiltmaker. It won Honorable Mention in this category.
I was so stunned by the incredible detail in this quilt and the rich, sumptuous colors that I totally forgot to photograph the sign. When I looked up Jenny’s website, I also found no hint of information about her inspiration for the quilt.
Jenny is more well know for her quilts that depict Middle Eastern scenes. Her website details her own history. “I have been working in Textiles since 1997 – from the time I finished a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Visual) and decided to make just one quilt. My background – life before quilts – was in science. I am moving towards a melding of my fine art work and my textile work. I am interested in the way pattern comes into many parts of our lives and often include some geometrical piecing in my work as I think it keeps me technically on my toes and provides a key for traditional quilters to link to my work. I have four children and a very supportive husband who worked as a diplomat for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. While following him I lived a total of fifteen years in Arab and Islamic countries. This might seem irrelevant to quilting, but has influenced my subject matter and much of my work reflects my love of the Middle East. I have lived in Syria, Western Samoa, Malaysia, Jordan, Jerusalem and Egypt.”
All Together, a collaboration between the husband/wife team of Hiroko and Masanobu Miyama is a visual feast. Masanobu also was the winner of the Superior Threads Master Award for Thread Artistry for his quilt, “Wind”, featured in one of my earlier posts. Hiroko writes, “This quilt is the first collaboration with my husband. Our sons in childhood, granddaughters, dogs, and wild animals play together at the lily mountain in Nagao. I appliqued my figure in high school days, too! All figures, flowers, as well as white mountains, are appliqued with very tiny pieced. This quilt took 1,600 hours to complete.”
Cochise is obviously a labor of love with deep meaning for the quiltmaker, Patsy Heacox. She writes, ” Most feared Apache, Cochise, a resourceful complex man, left his indelible footprint. courage, integrity, discipline, intelligence, and generosity earned adoration by “the People” and respect by non-natives. With the Dragoon Mountains at sunrise, Cochise stands in readiness. Quilting patterns are horses, geckos, horned toads, agaves, and a star quilt pattern.”
Can’t you just feel the joy radiating from this quilt? Tonya Littman writes, “A photo of me with my favorite motorcycle inspired me to make this quilt. Hand-dyed and commercial fabric and recycled men’s shirts have been fused to hand-dyed sateen and thread panted on my home sewing machine.”
Charming! Pat Durbin writes, “My twin great-nieces were so cute, I needed to use their image. I placed them in front of a Victorian window I found in Ferndale, CA, imagining it to be a pet store. I used their own dog, Timmy, as a hopeful volunteer, and my son’s parrot for the window. It was a challenging piece with lots of different techniques.”
Melissa Burdon writes, “I was inspired by an old black and white photo of my great aunt, grandmother, and father shopping in Wellington in 1938. I love how it reflects a period of history, as well as making me think of my own childhood, going shopping with Mum.”
Another masterful piece by Hollis Chatelain closes out this post where each piece is unique, original, and of exceptional workmanship. Hollis writes, “The joy of drinking fresh potable water directly from a faucet is still a luxury in many places throughout our world.”
One of the things that I have most enjoyed about sharing these posts with you is reviewing what I saw and photographed at the Houston show. Because I had also photographed almost all of the signs that accompanied the quilts, I was able to read what inspired their makers when they created these quilts. I also looked up each quiltmaker and created a link to their websites whenever one existed. It really helped me to have a better understanding for the women and men who exhibited in the 2013 IQA show.
But, there are still a few more to go. Stay tuned . . .