It’s been a long time since I’ve needed any safety pins, and even longer since I’ve had hair! I was rifling through a storage drawer looking for safety pins (prepping two baby quilts for quilting), when I re-discovered a stash of hair clips. They are such a great alternative to pins when finishing (hand-sewing) binding. I had forgotten about them! I don’t know how many times I’ve been stuck by pins in the binding process. Even with the hair clips, I somehow always manage to run the sharp end of my sewing needle under my left thumbnail a few times, and the blunt end usually punctures the middle finger of my right hand at some point. Ouch!
I made this quilt for my niece Jeny. She and her husband, Seth, are expecting their first baby Spring 2014. Here she is opening the quilt at her baby shower in Kansas City, their home.
Des Moines hosts national premiere of quilt show from China
By Michael Morain
If you haven’t seen hordes of needle-wielding visitors around town, you will soon. They’re heading this way for the American Quilter’s Society’s largest QuiltWeek ever, which opens Wednesday at the Iowa Events Center with displays, demonstrations, gadget sales and more than $44,000 in cash prizes.
So yeah, it’s an invasion. But they’re pieceworkers. They come in peace.
On the same day the expo opens, in fact, the State Historical Museum of Iowa opens an exhibition of American quilts the U.S. Embassy in Beijing recently trotted around to five cities in China. Call it textile diplomacy.
The project celebrates “the common threads between our two countries,” Arts Midwest President and CEO David Fraher said. His Twin Cities nonprofit partnered with the U.S. State Department and a network of state arts councils to make the show happen.
Des Moines is the first stop on the show’s U.S. tour and the only city where all 25 quilts will be displayed together. The honor results from Iowa’s close ties to China through trade agreements, cultural exchanges and the friendship between Gov. Terry Branstad and Chinese President Xi Jinping, said Iowa Arts Council Administrator Matthew Harris.
Besides, two of the 25 quilts came from Iowa.
Caroline Trumpold, 81, of Middle Amana made a whole-cloth quilt — with a single piece of fabric on each side — like the pair she and her husband received from each of their families at their wedding. She stitched a beautiful feathery design into a panel of pumpkin-colored poly-cotton (on one side) and tiny gold flowers (on the other) over the course of three weeks in December 2011. “I didn’t have a whole lot of time,” she said. “I wanted it done by January.”
The other Iowa quilt came from Erick Wolfmeyer, 46, who works as a school bus dispatcher in Iowa City. He colored a 1930s pattern called Arabic Lattice with the browns and blues you’d find in men’s suits and dress shirts.
“All it is is tile work. That’s really what it is,” he said. “I think of it as painting with fabric.” Wolfmeyer has a fine arts degree but didn’t start quilting until he made a baby blanket for one of his friends. For the quilt he sent to China, he designed the pattern but hired out the actual stitching to an Amish cooperative in Indiana.
He went to Shanghai last year to help open the show. He visited Chinese schools and museums, talking to quilters and non-quilters alike.
“They understood that quilting was a traditioanl art form, but they always asked ‘Why are there no animals or people or plants or flowers?’ That’s what they think of as ‘traditional,’ ” Wolfmeyer said. When the questions went the other direction, when he asked the Chinese what they knew about America, “the students always said ‘jazz’ and ‘Mickey Mouse.’ ”
Wolfmeyer will get his quilt back at the end of January, when he swaps in a different one for the rest of the show’s national tour.
Trumpold’s quilt is in it for the long haul, but she’s OK with that. She has others to keep her warm. Besides, she said, “It doesn’t fit my decor.”
Caroline Trumpold of Middle Amana stitched an elaborate feathery pattern onto her whole-cloth quilt, ‘The Peacock.’ / State Historical Museum of Iowa/Special to the Reg
Erick Wolfmeyer mixed light and dark into the quilt he calls ‘Portmanteau,’ borrowing the linguistic term for two words that combine into a second (smoke + fog = smog). / State Historical Museum of Iowa/Special to the Reg
With Caroline Trumpold (IA), Patricia Lei Murray (HI) and son of the late Marguerite Cox
With Caroline Trumpold of Middle Amana, Iowa
Patricia celebrates the exhibit opening as well as her birthday
with Gayle Jorgens and Stan Wai, designers of the award-winning exhibit catalog
This will be the only complete exhibition of “The Sum of Many Parts” in the US. I am thrilled that it will be in my current home state of Iowa at the State Historical Museum. Look for further announcements on programming (gallery talks, panel discussions) dates.
Fun large-scale Chevron quilt (finished size ~60×70″). Endless color combination possibilities. (Suggested pairing: machine-quilting class taught by Codi Josephson – date TBD)
This recipe is from a dear friend, a fellow quilter, and one of my “adopted” grandmothers, Caroline Trumpold, of Main Amana, Iowa. Dill beans are a German treat to look forward to every summer, if you are fortunate enough to find fresh yellow wax beans. This year I made them over Labor Day after stumbling on the wax beans at a high-end grocer in downtown Iowa City. The summer before I got the beans from a vegetable stand upon special request. The recipe is for about one pound of beans. I think I had two pounds and did a recipe-and-a-half of the brine.
Be charmed by this ~ 44″ x 55″ quilt-as-you-go project!
Learn to make this wonderful quilt pattern by Teri Stillwell. All sewing skill-levels welcome in this fun quilt-as-you-go class. Sew 5 strips from charm squares (5″ x 5″ squares), cut your sashing strips and start building your finished piece. My goal is for everyone to go home with a finished (or very nearly finished) quilt. Some homework may be required depending your individual in-class pace. This is a great quilt to really showcase some of your favorite Home Ec fabrics!
A nice article by Mary Kate Karr-Petras for Quilters Newsletter about my trip to Shanghai, China in September 2012 for “The Sum of Many Parts” exhibit.
June is bustin’ out all over! Learn to make this wonderful quilt pattern by Pam Rocco. Work toward a finished 50″ x 50″ quilt in this 6-hr class, or take the top home and make three more to construct a quilt fit for a QUEEN! Perfect gift for a bun in the oven or for someone you love bunches! Whimsical and loose: recovering perfectionists welcome!
Emily
Linzee
Maureen
Lisa
So great to see each student’s personality shine through in the quilts. What a fun quilt, class and group of students! Great job everyone!
Me
I eventually machine-quilted this sample and gave it to my niece, Jessica, for her daughter – my great niece, Bella Rose. Here she is wrapping herself up, peek-a-boo style, at her soon-to-be-cousin’s baby shower in Kansas City, MO.
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