Teaching at Quilt Fest 2023 in Utah
I’m expanding my horizons…
For the past years I have been teaching at quilt stores and guilds in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is the home of contemporary and art quilters and being a traditional handwork teacher, it’s sometimes a lonely place to be. Luckily I have found small pockets of what I call “my people”, fellow hand quilters and hand embroiders who don’t look at you strangely and ask why you don’t use a machine. (The second question I get is how long it takes to hand piece and hand quilt your quilt as if time is the deciding factor and not the satisfaction a quilter can get from creating by hand.) If I had a nickel for every time I have been asked these questions, I would be the richest quilter in the known universe.
Imagine my surprise when I investigated the quilt guilds around the Salt Lake City area. My son, daughter in law, and grandkids moved to Utah a couple of years ago and live outside of Salt Lake in a small suburb called Roy. Of course I visit them often and was happy to find out that there are quilters in Roy and they have their own guild. It seems that there are so many quilters in Utah that they have small guilds dotted all over the state. And there are many hand quilters amongst them. There are a bunch of “my people”. And, they have a big show sponsored by the Utah State Quilt Guild that takes place in Layton, just next door to where my son and family live. So I submitted a couple of classes and one was accepted, my Crayon Tint Embroidery class.
So I joined the Utah State Quilt Guild and I’m going to participate in this show both as a teacher and a fellow quilter. I am submitting 3 of my quilts to hang in the show, two in the Champion category (this is the category for teachers and professionals), and one to just hang but not to be judged. There is even a prize given to the best hand quilted entry, the Founders Award for Hand Quilting, not that my entry would qualify, hint hint.
This is the first time I have entered my Four Seasons quilt in a show. This is a leap of faith. I keep telling myself “Self, you are entering this quilt because you want to show your crayon tint students what they can do with this technique.” But I have to be honest and also say I thought show judges in the Bay Area would not appreciate the design and workmanship. It is not densely quilted and the design is more on the traditional side, none of which is popular in the Bay Area shows. We’ll see what the Utah judges think about it. Thankfully there is room for me to walk about outside when I discover my quilts didn’t win any awards and burn off my internal hissy fit. See my Substack entitled “Quilt shows bring out my competitive side” for further explanation about this.
The cherry on the sundae is being able to bring my son and his family to a quilt show and let them see what my world is all about. I have to admit they are a very polite group and hopefully they will make polite remarks and not show how bored they are by the whole thing.
My required self promotion: I’m teaching Crayon Tint Embroidery on Tuesday, October 11, at 9 AM. If you are Utah local you can register at Utah State Quilt Fest 2023.