Quilters draw inspiration from graffiti and scenes from the nation’s capital
Karla Overland opted for the unexpected when deciding on her Cherrywood Challenge for the International Quilt Festival, an event that continues this weekend at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
Overland owns the Cherrywood Fabrics store in Baxter, Minn., and for the past seven years has hosted a quilt challenge, picking a theme and selling fabric kits — a selection of different fabrics — that quilters use in their original designs. They can add different threads, paint or other embellishments as they wish.
Her teenaged daughter suggested graffiti for a modern take on this traditional craft.
“She’s a skateboarder and young and hip, and graffiti is totally unexpected in the world of quilting,” Overland said. “I wanted to see how they could take something so traditional like quilting and interpret it into something more modern and streetsmart, crossing the boundaries of what a quilt is.”
In all, 386 quilts by quilters all over the world were entered in the challenge — she usually gets 300 to 400 entries — and 186 of them will be on display here.
“It’s fascinating to see that many people start with the same colors and yet get 386 different results,” Overland said. “Seeing them all in Houston, where there’s such a huge space, all of them the same size, color, theme and fabric, there’s a term called gestalt, where the whole exhibit is about more than the individual pieces.”
Her guidelines were simple: The finished pieces were to be 20 inches square and use a kit of eight colors of fabric (black, two shades of gray, plus turquoise, blue, green, orange and yellow). They could add in anything else they wanted, including different thread colors, paint, beads or other embellishments.
Overland said the smaller size ensured it wouldn’t be too much work for anyone to get finished in time. The result is a group of lively quilts that range from self expression to artists tapping into graffiti they see on their own drives around the cities where they live.
The Houston quilt show is where many quilt exhibits are launched, then they travel around the country to quilt shows and other exhibits. These quilts are already booked for national shows around the country, including in Santa Clara, Calif., Hampton, Va., and Daytona Beach, Fla., she said.
Quilt themes from past years have included Broadway productions, the music of Prince, artist Vincent van Gogh and Princess Diana, a group of which are in traveling exhibits this year to mark the 25th anniversary of her death. Images of each challenge are then turned into a catalog, in book form, to document the exhibit. Overland said this year’s version will be an e-book, so it will be less expensive and easier to distribute.
Overland has already chosen monarch butterflies as next year’s challenge, and she’ll have fabric kits for sale at her booth at the market, which is next to the exhibit halls.
‘Inspired’ quilts
Donna DeSoto of Fairfax, Va., curated another exhibit of quilts “Inspired by Washington, D.C.” — her fifth “Inspired by” exhibit. She chose the nation’s capital after visiting the District of Columbia for the National Park Service centennial. When someone casually mentioned that she should celebrate it in her quilts, she was inspired.
“I’ve been to many other quilt exhibits, and for awhile, there was a big movement of COVID-19 quilts. There were a lot of emotions over COVID, and there’s an important place for those quilts,” DeSoto said. “The quilts in my collections … I want people to look at these and feel hope. I don’t want to crush hope. I want them to know that life goes on, and there’s beauty.”
The quilts are 24 inches square, and DeSoto wanted to see a variety of topics, techniques, styles and interpretations, but no politics. While 103 quilts were submitted, just 26 will be on display. Major landmarks play a big role in this theme, and you’ll see quilts focusing on the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and its Easter Egg Roll,
Mount Vernon, the National Mall, the Marine Corps Memorial and even the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is worth pausing for to take in the moment and remember the lives lost in pursuit of the freedoms we all enjoy.
“The quilts will remind people visually of D.C., but hopefully, they will inspire people to come to the city. It belongs to all of us,” DeSoto said. “There’s nothing like walking around D.C. and thinking about the gravity of the history and the people who’ve walked those sidewalks. It’s very moving.”
DeSoto said that quilting was the perfect hobby for the pandemic, as quilters generally have stockpiles of fabric and not enough time to work with it. Quilting teachers got online quickly, she said, and she was able to attend classes done virtually all over the world.
Many of us collect lots and lots of fabric, so what was great about being stuck at home (during the pandemic), is that we got to dive into our mother lode of fabric we’ve collected for many years,” DeSoto said, noting the many classes that were offered online from around the world. “I learned new ways of putting colors together, worked on techniques like applique and got some landscape ideas. It has opened a whole new world to quilters.”