Joedy Kimmel with Lillian's Legacy Quilt
“With its move to the Jacksonville Elementary School gymnasium, the Jacksonville Museum Quilters’ 33rd Annual Quilt Show, will be bigger and grander than ever!” enthuses Nell Mathern, publicity co-chair. “The school is ideal! We can have more quilts and more vendors. There’s lots of parking, and it’s accessible – no stairs to climb!”
The 2011 show, which runs from Friday, July 8, through Sunday, July 10, attracts visitors from the entire Pacific Northwest.
“I’m sure we’ll have close to 150 quilts,” show co-chair Carolyn Wolf confirms. “Many will be vintage pieces. We had one quilt come in that someone had found being used as a rug on a floor in Kentucky.”
Although the Guild is dedicated to preserving the art of hand quilting, the annual event showcases quilting’s many forms. “We’ll have a group of machine-stitched quilts done on long arm sewing machines,” Wolf points out. “Everyone uses the same design – this year it’s an Irish chain – but then they choose their own fabrics and quilting pattern, and the quilts all look totally different.
“We’ll have art quilts created by fabric artists,” she continues. And we’ll have some wearable art.” Mathern will do a “bed turning,” sharing Guild history through its quilts. The vendor section expands from two to thirteen, including sewing machines, hand dyed fabrics, and quilting squares. And for the first time, exhibitors will be allowed to sell their quilts. Plus some of the quilts from the Guild’s own collection will be for sale.
Master quilter and appliqué artist, Joedy Kimmel, will be the show’s featured quilter, and five of her appliquéd quilts will be on display. “Four of them are Baltimore Album appliqués,” Kimmel points out, “started by a group of ladies back in the 1800s.
“The quilts are made up of blocks, and each block has a different pattern. A lady might pick out the patterns or design her own and have a different friend put each block together. Traditionally the quilts were red and green, but over the years, they’ve been modernized and all sorts of colors have been added. They’re my favorites.”
Kimmel is also the “instigator” who introduced the members of the Jacksonville Museum Quilters Guild to appliqué 10 years ago. Now all of the “Opportunity Quilts” that the Guild produces are appliquéd blocks.
This year’s Opportunity Quilt is dubbed “Lillian’s Legacy,” a tribute to former Guild member Lillian Passini. “Her husband brought us her fabric stash,” explains Mathern, “and Joedy hand cut every pattern piece and made packets of each block. Guild members from as far away as New Zealand worked on the blocks, so we can say this is an international effort.”
This beautiful 92” x 92” square quilt will be raffled off the last day of the show. Raffle tickets sell for $1 a chance, or six for $5, and are available at the show and in advance at Country Quilts, 214 East California Street in Jacksonville.
This year’s show also includes a memorial section of wall hangings hand stitched by Margaret Hunsaker, a former Guild member who passed away in 2010. “Margaret was an absolutely fabulous appliqué person who was well known in the quilting world,” show co-chair Margaret Rambo explains. “If you’re lucky enough to have a piece of her appliqué, you’re in heaven!
“And for quilters, this year’s show is also a little piece of heaven. So we hope everybody will join us in ‘heaven’ – it’s going to be beautiful!”
[…] by Carolyn Kingsnorth for the Jacksonville Review (appeared in both the July print version and web version of the […]