Finishing Old Quilt Tops: Trunk Show & How To
Tucked inside closets around the world are antique quilt tops that were never finished. This lecture and trunk show will inspire you to dig out those old tops and give them new life by quilting them on your longarm or domestic machine. Veteran researcher and quiltmaker Teresa Duryea Wong will share tips on how to get started, plus and the ins and outs of working with these long forgotten and fragile tops. Teresa will share tips for preparing each quilt top for the machine and the best free-motion stitching motifs to honor the original patchwork. After finishing some 30 antique quilt tops, Teresa has thought deeply about how she has forever changed these objects. She will add new insight into the age-old debate on whether altering an antique destroys value or creates value. This lecture can be delivered over Zoom, but in person is best! The quilts are ready to…
Kawaii Appliqué Quilts from Japan: Joint Lecture by Naomi Ichikawa & Teresa Duryea Wong
There is a culture of cuteness in Japan that is so pervasive it has its own name, Kawaii. These days, Kawaii means almost anything cool, beautiful, or nice, including a new genre of quilts that Naomi Ichikawa & Teresa Duryea Wong have dubbed Kawaii quilts. In this joint lecture, you’ll hear how an obscure set of laws in the 1600s set an entire country on a course to adore tiny things, plus how centuries of Hina Matsuri celebrations have influenced quilting. We will introduce Yoko Sekita, Aki Sakai, Reiko Kato, Akiko Yoshimizu, Megumi Mizuno, and Hiroko Akita and show incredible close-up images of their stunning quilts which are covered with tens of thousands of tiny patches to create exquisite works of art that are distinctly Japanese, and most definitely kawaii. Naomi will share her expertise through a series of high-quality, pre-recorded videos, and Teresa will be live to tell the…
The Calling of Quilt Collectors
Quilt collectors play a critical role in the circle of life of art. When museums and collectors purchase a quilt, the work of the artist is immediately validated, and the quilt obtains a monetary value that did not exist before. This lecture will explore the collections of major antique quilt collectors such as Joanna Rose, Eli Leon, and Robert & Ardis James — and why their vision and passion are so important to quilt preservation. In addition, you’ll be introduced to the collections of Robert & Helen Cargo, Frank Klein, Jack Walsh, and Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi. Hear the stories of these collectors and how their passion spurred their hunt for quilts. ADD ON FOR MODERN GUILDS: A titanic shift in the Modern Quilt Guild has taken place in recent years as quilts exhibited at QuiltCon are acquired not only by big-time collectors and museums, but also by fellow MQG makers.…
Japan’s Quilt History: The Story of an American Import
The three-layered quilt was imported from America to Japan. It was quickly adopted and adapted to become a favorite pastime for an estimated three million quilters in Japan today. Once adopted, Japan took this pastime seriously and systems were quickly built to teach adept and eager sewists how to make masterpieces. By the 1990s, Japanese quilt makers were world renowned for their traditional hand-pieced and hand-quilted quilts. Go inside the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival and learn how it became the largest attended quilt event in the world. Japan’s journey from importer to trailblazer is a fascinating journey through Japanese history, cultural expectations, and the process by which one is deemed a ‘master quilter’ or not.
Quilts, Cotton & Indigo from Japan: The Very Old and Very New
Go back in time, to a fascinating point in Japan’s history when cotton & indigo – two epic plants – forever changed Japan’s textile world. Meet the masters who are preserving the old traditions of indigo dyeing and meet the quilters who have dedicated their quiltmaking to working with antique cotton. Learn the stories behind traditional cotton textiles such as kasuri, katazome and kimono cloth and how a handful of Japanese weavers are continuing these traditions into the 21st century. Go inside Japan’s esteemed textile printing mills and hear why the finest quilting cotton in the world is currently printed in Japan.
Japan 2.0: The Next Gen Quilters
Meet the Next Gen of Japanese quilt artists. Japan’s history and cultural norms set very clear rules for who is and who is not considered a Master and this lecture will explain why, and how, that happens. But in the Japan 2.0 universe, there is a community of quilters for the 21st century who are operating outside the rigid cultural lines of the traditional Master/Student relationship. They are creating original, modern quilts with a global eye while still managing to reference the Japanese aesthetic.