Quilt National ’25!

I’m still excited from my trip to the opening of Quilt National ’25 on Memorial Day weekend! It’s been a busy few weeks–I was in Ohio already studying with Nancy Crow for two weeks when the show opened and now I’m just back from a week teaching in Columbus, Indiana.

Thanks to my husband Phil for taking the photo. It was fun to have him there with me at the opening this time.

Quilt National is one of the best shows in the country and it is an honor to have one of my quilts chosen to be included. There are 84 quilts juried in from 659 entries submitted by 370 artists from all over the world. Many thanks to jurors Martha Sielman, Ellen Blalock and Luke Haynes for their hard work in selecting the artwork for this show. The show runs at the Dairy Barn in Athens, OH until September 1, 2025 if you’re in the area.

This is my second time being juried in to Quilt National. The first was QN ’23 and you can read about it on the blog here.

I was happy with the placement of my quilt in the show–on one of the back walls just to the right as you enter.

There was a good showing of people for the opening weekend. Below is Canadian artist Laurie Paquin giving a talk about her work Composition 3. She won the Emerging Artist award this year. She credited her studies with Irene Roderick for helping her find her voice with line and shape.

Here are a few others that I liked in the show, in no particular order.

Susan is a friend and I love her work–the lines, the shapes, the colors are beautiful.

 

I loved the juxtaposition of these three quilts–Whitcross by Carson Converse on the left, Clandestine by Irene Roderick in the middle, and Metanoia by Jennifer Candon in the back.

There’s a nice catalog with photos of all of the quilts that can be purchased from the Dairy Barn website although sadly the photo of my quilt isn’t great.

My quilt is called Musings II and it is part of a series I’ve been working on for a couple of years exploring larger shapes and how they interact with the space they are surrounded by. I had the idea for this piece in November 2023 when I was doing an independent study week at Art Quilt Tahoe. The piece I made there was smaller and I wanted to see if I could expand upon it. My dear friend, the late Sarah Bond, had talked about using a Layout app to explore enlarging or tiling a small block or quilt, so I decided to give it a try.

Here is one of the tiled versions of the smaller quilt. I didn’t want to replicate it that way, but it gave me a starting point to create the quilt that was in my head.

I spent a long time cutting the saucer shapes and figuring out how to place them in the composition. The most intense colors are in the center and the backgrounds are a variety of dark moody colors that provided an interesting contrast.

Here’s another photo with my students Angela and Sherrill, who came to the opening.