In late June, I went to California to teach at the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association. I was fortunate to spend a wonderful afternoon at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. The main exhibit was from Visions 2013 and no photographs were allowed. In the entrance hall, where photographs were allowed, there was an interesting exhibit entitled Now and Then: Early Art Quilts by Ros Cross 1973-1976. Broken Quilt, made in 1976 is made with cotton, unbleached cotton muslin, polyester batting and polyurethane. Some of the fabrics are hand tea-dyed and the quilt is machine quilted with a double lined grid in the background.

As you can see the fragments of quilts are stuffed adding to the visual imagery and making them look like shards of broken pottery. Ros Cross works in a variety of media including sculpture, drawing, painting and monoprinting. Early in her artistic career she moved from her native home of England to America and began working with textiles. She was fascinated with and inspired by the American quilt tradition and her art work evolved and digressed into quilt making, but without reference to traditional quilting techniques. She connected the worlds of contemporary art practice with the more historical quilt tradition and was way ahead of her time.

Flags, made in 1975 with polyester cotton blend fabric and machine quilting reminds me of mortar boards at a graduation. These three-dimensional black flags cast interesting shadows on the quilt and their appearance changed as you walked past. I find it inspiring and refreshing to see such an innovative approach to quilting and these quilts were made almost forty years ago!

Last weekend my local guild, Kitsap Quilters, held their annual show at the Kitsap Fairgrounds in Silverdale and I enjoyed helping to hang the quilts and working in the kitchen during the show. This was the 28th show and my 22nd with them. The theme this year was Quilts in Bloom. Our guild has around 200 members and embraces a wide range of quilting techniques and styles. In this blog I’ll share pictures of the work of our featured quilter, Gladys Schulz from Bainbridge Island.

Here is Gladys in her display area with her lovely iris quilt. The large scale one-block wonder quilt is vibrant. Gladys has been quilting for over fifty years, but seriously so for the last 25. She has a long-arm machine and is prolific in her own work as well as quilting for others. She is incredibly generous, donating many quilts every year to a variety of charities.

She made the attractive Feathered Star quilt to test my Radiant Feathered Star pattern before I published it. Gladys is an accurate piecer and I knew I could rely on her to pick up any glitches in my pattern and make useful suggestions for improvements. Recently, she has begun ice dyeing fabric. She made the background of the floral quilt using this technique. The detailed shot shows how she cut and appliqued flowers onto the hand-dyed background.

Gladys loves to try new quilting techniques and her machine quilting gets better and better. This magnificent quilt really show cases her quilting skills.  The simple four patch quilt with lattice is so pretty and a great use of the large-scale print.