QuiltCon 2013: Denyse Schmidt Lecture and Quilts

Well, I'm finally back with another QuiltCon 2013 post. I promised to show photos of her quilts and a few tidbits from her lecture, so without further ado...

my favorite quilts from the Denyse Schmidt exhibit at QuiltCon.

The Straight and Narrow #2.

Cotton, linen. 2011. Courtesy Ralph Pucci International.

(The Straight and Narrow #2, detail of fabrics and quilting)

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4 Crosses, steel.

Cotton, designed 2008, produced 2013.

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Glasshouse Shelves.

 Cotton. Designed 2008, produced 2013.

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Roots, ginger. 

Cotton. 1998. Collection of Wendy Marquardt.

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Hope as the Anchor of the Soul #2.

Mount Lebanon Series New.

New and vintage cotton and linen. 2010. Collection of Greg Couch.

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String Theory, red, from the Denyse Schmidt for Sarita Handa Collection.

Cotton, 2005.

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Pretty Square, fog, from the Denyse Schmidt for Sarita Handa Collection. 

Cotton, 2004-2005.

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Courthouse Steps. 

Cotton, 2009. 

Hope you enjoyed seeing these.

If you have a chance to see them in person, go! They are wonderful.

And if you can ever listen to Denyse speak, go! She's wonderful and hilarious.

Some highlights from her lecture:

She began her quilting journey when she moved to a new place (New Jersey I believe) to live with a boyfriend and needed to make friends. 

She took a stone carving class and for one assignment she carved the saying:

"My Mother Said Nothing Is Ever Written In Stone."

She created a font for text and showed us pictures of it being used on the backs of semi trailers (which she loves to take pictures of and look at because they are of similar size to quilts). One of those trailers was for a fish company with the slogan: Meat Without Feet!

Lastly, she said she designs and plans quilts for beds. So every quilt is designed to look good when draped over a bed. 

Katie

QuiltCon 2013: Lectures

While we were at QuiltCon, we attended a number of lectures.
Some of the highlights were:

Yoshiko Jinzenji was the first lecture we went to and Wow! Yoshiko's quilts are stunning in person and she is adorable. She spoke very quickly and showed us so much about her process and many of her quilts. To say they are a work of art is putting it lightly.

Angela Walters: was a crowd favorite for good reason. She was full of jokes and information about how she quilts and why she got started. It was really fun to hear her talk about blending thread, getting bored at the machine, and how her husband's grandfather got her started sewing and quilting.

Here is some of her free motion quilting up close. No picture of her because she moved around a lot and all of them are very blurry! 

David Butler, the designer of Parson Gray, was probably my favorite of all the lectures, which is saying a LOT considering the all-star line up. One of the main things he said that struck me was about how to create a "feeling" in a photograph. He said "exaggerate so it isn't dull. Add 20% to everything you shoot."  He also said "It will always have your voice on it if it is something you love.

I didn't get any good pictures while David was talking, because we were too far back, BUT I did get a picture with him afterwards. Since I love both of his fabric lines, I was thrilled!

Amy Butler  showed her color design process. It was fascinating to see how she takes inspiration from 100s of photographs, and uses paint chips and markers to come up with several different color palettes for her fabric lines.

Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr showed a ton of slides of their quilts. They talked about how hard it has been for them to feel recognized as "quilters" in a world that is only starting to embrace modern quilting. Their story was interesting and their quilts, as expected, were wonderful.

This is a blurry picture, but they were very cute with each other. Unfortunately, it is all I've got. 

Denyse Schmidt was the keynote speaker. She was wonderful and I'll be back tomorrow with a post about some of those details! So check back in.