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This past Saturday Chris and I drove up to Harrisonburg for the Virginia Quilt Museum reception for the Unity in Diversity exhibit. First off, I have to give giant kudos to my friend, Estelle Porter, for curating the exhibit. She did an amazing job of putting together a very diverse collection of quilts into a cohesive exhibit. It was humbling to walk through the exhibit and to know that all of the quilts came from our little 35+ member Chapter.
With permission from the artists, I wanted to share some of the quilts in the exhibit with you. I apologize that some of the photos are kind of grainy. My camera battery was dying. But that has a upside, at least no one would want to take these images from my blog. It's one thing if someone steals an image of my own work but I'd feel really bad if someone too an image of someone else's work.
First, I'll share a few quilts from Estelle. She produces a wide range of work. Not included in this exhibit are any of her amazing commission house portraits. They were written up in American Quilter a few years ago and some day I will get a photo of one to share. Meanwhile, you can be impressed with these.
This first quilt is very special to me because I feel responsible for Estelle making it. For several years I collected thousands of squares to make watercolor quilts. I eventually made one and quickly discovered that I hated the watercolor quilt technique. I love admiring the quilts but hated making them. But I had boxes of 2" floral square lemons. Instead I made this quilt. It's not a bad quilt. In fact, I like it a lot but it hardly made a dent in the box of lemon squares. I gave the leftover squares to Estelle and she made THIS quilt! How about that? That's quilte a glass of lemonade isn't it? This quilt was exhibited in Houston one year. She named it the Anti-Shopping quilt because she worked on it in December as a reward for finishing her Christmas shopping (a task she abhors).
Estelle also makes fabulous art quilts. Here'are 2 of several that were in the exhibit.
Here's another of Estelle's art quilts hanging next to my Star Struck.
The beautiful applique quilt was made by Esther Lowry and is beautifully appliqued and hand quilted. The one I want to talk about is the churn dash on the left. It was made by Kitty Bates and from here it looks like a nice pretty churn dash.
But a closer inspection reveals that it is a memory quilt. She gathered photos and did a lot of research and created this quilt in memory of her father. Next to the quilt was a legend explaining every photo. The legend is permanently documented with applique labels on the back fo the quilt behind every block. It's a really beautiful tribute and exquisitely made.
Remember the fish quilt that my friend, Anne, made? Here is it hanging in the upstairs landing near Estelle's Anti-Shopping quilt and my Symmetry series quilts.
It was very exciting to see them all hung together like this!
Tomorrow I will introduce you to Becky Brown. Her quilts deserve a post of their own!
