Beyond Comfort - SAQA-exhibit in Birmingham (UK)

Last Wednesday I sent off two more of my quilts to the USA. „Illuminated“ and „Yellow Line“ have both been accepted as part of SAQA’s Beyond Comfort Show which will be shown for the first time at the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham this Summer.

"Illuminated"  is the quilt which I first entered at the competition in Ste.-Marie-aux-Mines and which had been the completely wrong size. Since it fit the conditions for „Beyond Comfort“ as well, namely „do something that you’ve never done before“, I decided to try for another chance. The whole process of evolution of this quilt is too long to tell, in fact I don’t really remember all the various stages it went through. At some point I even considered including small silver pieces that had been worked on by my goldsmith friend, but that would have been too expensive. I did want to include some sparkle, though, and came up with the string of LED-lights which I had seen during the Christmas season. Luckily they still had one left at the shop when I finally asked for it.

"Illuminated" (2010) - Detail.
Includes LED-string, pearls, rocailles, fishing line, coral pieces...

"Illuminated" - full view.
40 x 40 ''.

„Yellow Line“ was originally conceived in a slightly different format than it appears in now. I wanted to do a really long and narrow quilt that would hang from the very top of the wall down to the floor, perhaps even be lieing in a heap on the floor. But even a call for entries named „Beyond Comfort“ and asking for something really different came with size restrictions, and the original plan did not fit into those, three inches wide was not wide enough, and over three yards long was too long... At first I almost abandoned the idea entirely, but then I came up with the solution of tieing it up in a sort of weave.

"Yellow Line" (2010).

Both of these certainly are rather different from what I had been doing just before with my series „Play of Lines“. And they gave me an inkling of what it feels like to move on. Not that I really think I am completely done with Play of Lines yet. But at least I have had a sense of what lies beyond the comfort zone ...