Celebrate National Quilting Day!
Saturday is National Quilting Day! It’s a special day to appreciate your favorite quilter and share your love of quilting with others. I’ll be spending the day sewing at quilt retreat, hopefully finishing a quilt top or two.
My guild, the Mississippi Valley Quilters Guild, is celebrating with a special mini quilt show at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. If you live in or near the Quad Cities it is worth checking out. The special exhibit opened yesterday, featuring 30 award winning quilts. Twenty-nine of the quilts were ribbon winners at the 2014 Great River Quilt Show, hosted by the MVQG. One quilt was made by 16-year-old Andrea Fig as part of a 4-H project. It was her first quilt and she won best of show at the Mississippi Valley Fair and second place at the Iowa State Fair.
The MVQG Board worked hard to select quilts that not only showed a wide spectrum of quilting styles, but also highlighted quilters who didn’t fit the typical stereotype of a little old grandma quilting. As a quilter who doesn’t fit that stereotype, I am proud to be a part of a guild that goes out of its way to dispel the image of who quilters are.
Some of the quilters that break the mold are Clayton Peterson, one of the male members of the MVQG, who created a cow art quilt that is inspired by the work of Grant Wood. The quilt won second place in the viewers choice category at the 2014 Great River Quilt Show.
Another quilt that helps break down stereotypes is a modern art quilt made by one of the older members of the guild, Dorothy Towler. She used a snow-dying technique to create her own fabric and then created a whole cloth quilt that brought out the features of her fabric.
“We hope the quilt show at the Figge Art Museum will blow up the misconceptions about what a quilter looks like,” said Nancy Jacobsen, president of MVQG. “We’re not all little old ladies quilting. There are young people quilting, there are men and we do it for all sorts of reasons.”
The mini quilt show at the Figge runs through Sunday March 22, and is free with museum admission which is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and students, $4 for children ages 4 to 12 and free for children age 3 and younger. The Figge is located at 225 West Second Street in Davenport.
On Saturday, March 21, members of the Mississippi Valley Quilters Guild will have free activities for children where they can make their own quilt using fabric scraps, glue and cardstock.
How are you celebrating National Quilting Day?