According to an article in Asheville Citizen-Times, Saturday, March 15, is National Quilting Day.  Festivities and folk art demonstrations will take place as quilters spend the day doing what they love…quilting.

The Southern Highland Craft Guild will celebrate National Quilting Day on Saturday by sponsoring demonstrations and a quilt display at the Folk Art Center, Milepost 382 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, just east of Asheville.

What are other quilters and quilting guilds and groups doingon National Quilting Day to recognize this art that has played a role in our country’s history and continues to be popular today?

Do you have anything planned?

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen

Post from: Blisstree

What Are You Doing for National Quilting Day?

  The continued controversy about Gee’s Bend quilts and the numerous exhibits around the country seem to have increased their popularity and the familiarity of the name.  To read about an exhibit at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY and a very balanced article, check out Do quit promoters exploit folk artists? by Diane Heilenman, in the Courier-Journal.com.

Ms. Heilenman also mentions another quilt exhibit in Louisville, African-American Art Quilts, at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.

Both shows reflect some of the clothesline look and awkward visual competitions that seem to always attend hanging big, bold quilts in large numbers. Yet both shows shine with the wonderful individuality of design that denies the prissy symmetry and careful stitches of conventional patchwork quilting.

Then she follows with an in depth report of quilts purchased, displayed, sold, and reproduced by folk art dealers and promoters.

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen

Related articles:

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend

PBS – The Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend

Update on Gee’s Bend Quilts & Quilters

Quilters of Gee’s Bend Inspiration for a Play

Post from: Blisstree

More Gee’s Bend Quilt Exhibits & Analysis of Folk Art Promoters