Quilt as Art at the Howe, and the Soon-To-Be Legendary Stash Sale
Color. It’s my initial impression when I step from the elevator into the Ledyard Gallery on the second floor of the Howe Library. The current exhibition—which is, unfortunately ending too soon, through September 24—is Quilts: An Evolving Art Form, from the Northern Lights Quilt Guild. But there’s more: texture, size (large and small), stalwart rectangles and free-form, and narrative, sometimes revealed by each quilter in describing the inspiration for a particular work.
Quilting has evolved to include a myriad of styles; they may be traditional, modern, or abstract, and include collage, paint, dye, and embellishments. No matter the style, or the materials used to make it, the most basic definition of a quilt is a fabric piece with 4 layers: a quilt top (typically the most decorative side), batting – the soft internal hidden layer, a quilt back (sometimes as beautiful as the front), and thread that stitches the layers together. —Northern Lights Quilt Guild
A quilt of butterflies by Madge. E. Buus-Frank, “Give Them Wings So They Can Fly”(detail, just above) drew me in to focus, for the first time, on the thread (along with “double batting”) that creates that intricate and oh-so-touchable texture. The artist was inspired by watching her oldest granddaughter prepare for college; reflecting on children growing and going, she asks: “It seems building ‘wings’ is our job?”
And a modern quilt by Sandy Warner, below, asks the question of the past few decades, first posed by Rodney King, and says “ . . .The integration of black and white faces, carefully fit together, gave me hope that perhaps we can all get along?”
It turns out there is quite a lot to know about quilting and quilters. Paducah, Kentucky is the US spiritual home of quilting, with a museum of over 300 quilts on display. Paducah, and apparently this is a rare honor, is a UNESCO Creative City. Quilting is a 3.9 billion dollar industry in the US. 85% of US quilters are women, the average age is 63, and yet, 35% are under the age of 45. The average quilter has 7.5 (?) pairs of scissors, which you would never dare to touch without permission, and 53 yards of fabric in her stash.
The Legendary Stash Sale: Fabric by the Pound
Which brings me to a related event: author, quilter, and former Guild member Sonja Hakala brought a unique upcoming event to my attention. Judi Simon-Bouton, according to Sonja, “was an inventive quilter who had the ability to turn all sorts of fabrics into art.” She died about a year ago from Alzheimer’s. Sonja went on: “She [Judi] also had accumulated thousands of yards of fabric in her stash (seriously, I’ve never seen a stash quite this big).”
Whither the stash, then? Sonja and friends have arranged for “a legendary stash sale” at the Bugbee Senior Center in White River Junction on Sunday, October 6 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, proceeds to go to the Alzheimer’s Association of Vermont and the host site. Fabrics include cotton batiks, some embellished with silver and gold, colored floral prints and geometrics, and more. Also fleece, flannels, and dress fabrics “including slinky yards of rayon . . . that flow like water over river rocks.”
More information about the sale can be found on a webpage here.
(More stats—all fascinating—about quilting are here. Additional information on the exhibition at Howe Library in Hanover, NH, including a video of quilters talking about their art, is here.)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.