Maria Shell started out as a traditional quilter, but soon found herself making abstract pieced art quilts that look surprisingly modern. Maria will share her personal journey in and about the traditional, art, and modern quilt movements. Can you be all three? Come to the lecture and find out. Learn more about Maria here.

Before easy access to the local quilt shop, before internet shopping, how and where did one obtain materials for quilt making? And once a quiltmaker had a collection of available materials, how did those materials inform design and construction? What can we learn from quilts made with a restricted supply or unusual types or sizes of materials? Sue Fox and Julia McLeod—aka Silk & Salvage—will take a wide-ranging look at quilts made from silk, linen, wool and other fabrics, such…

Amy’s lecture begins with a brief retrospective of her artistic career over the past 12 years then transitions into her current quilt projects. Since 2005 she has been making urban quilts: textiles inspired by street art, signage, and graffiti. Currently, her work involves double portraits of women depicting their view of themselves versus how they are perceived by others. Learn more about Amy here.

Bojagi (Korean Wrapping Cloths) are pieced together from small scraps of cloth. It is the most unique form of Korean textile art. Bojagi occupied a prominent place in the daily lives of Koreans of all classes. They were used to wrap or carry everything from precious ritual objects to everyday clothes and common household goods and also to cover food. It is also strikingly contemporary: the designs and colors of bojagi remind one of the works of modern abstract artists.…

Using both a slideshow and trunk show of her colorful quilts, Jane Haworth describes her journey into the quilting world following a move from the UK. She has experimented with many art quilting techniques to find her creative voice. Visit Jane’s web site.

Improvisational quilting is an intuitive way of creating quilts. Fern often starts her quilts by playing with scraps or an idea, drawing a rough sketch, or wondering: What if? In this lecture, Fern describes her quilting process and how each decision informs the next, keeping her engaged, focused and often unsure of what happens next. You can find out more about Fern here.

Starting with her grandma’s quilt and her first blue-ribbon quilt, Linda charts her development as an art quilter through some 40 of her patchwork, story, portrait, landscape, abstract and liturgical quilts  All her quilts have a story, each completely different from the next. Mixing a little poetry, a bit of philosophy and some history, Linda examines how our quilts tie us to our mothers, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers and the great beyond. Learn more about Linda here.

Learn about the innovative and inter-generational work of the Social Justice Sewing Academy from founder Sara Trail.  She’ll share the history of activist quiltmaking and the inspiration that led to the development of the organization. The SJSA is on the web here.