This month our guild meeting was a trip down to Chattanooga for the AQS Quilt Week.
Two years ago (I can’t believe it has been that long!) I went to the Paducah AQS Quilt show and this year the dates happened to coincide with our guild’s meeting date.
Our guild set out for the journey over to Chattanooga, and a few of us even met up with the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild for lunch!
There were a lot of really amazing quilts, and they were all in different categories; hand work, home machine quilted, small quilts, large quilts, political quilts! However, there were some “quilts” that were just way out there.
One of these quilts was made up from sugar packets that were printed with dollar bill parts, so they could be assembled into a mosaic of sorts. I mean I get it, sugar, money, evil, bla bla bla. It looked like a quilt the Illuminati would be behind. Then there was another one that was actually made out of trash. Candy wrappers, doo-dads, fruit netting, you name it. There was also one made of chicken wire. YES. I said chicken wire, and then it was like, tin pans with paint on them attached to each of the “blocks” of chicken wire. I am not part of the “quilt police” but that’s not a quilt. I’m sure someone may call it art, but it’s not a quilt. Just so you don’t think I’m some kind of purist, there was also a quilt made from plastic bags and that reflective bubble wrap like insulation, and I didn’t poo poo all over that one.
Just a trashy quilt. I’m here all week.
There were also art quilts, which, yes they’re quilts in the purest sense of the word. They’re pieces of fabric quilted together with batting in between and all that jazz. But these quilts are not meant for snuggling. These are meant to look at and probably not touched.
I thought that the political quilts were particularly interesting for a few reasons. The color scheme is almost always red, white and blue, understandably. Some of these quilts were from the early 1900s and held up incredibly well. The color in these quilts held up amazingly considering their age. There were lots of presidential faces drawn and then sometimes embellished with needlepoint or even paint. There was one quilt in particular that was really interesting. It was covered in red diamonds with blue squares, and a capital “H” inside. Maybe you immediately think “Is this a Hillary Clinton quilt?” but you would be wrong! It was a Herbert Hoover quilt! Again, as well as the fabric has held up for as old as it was, (History lesson: Herbert Hoover was the president from 1929 – 1933 and this quilt was from around the same era) it looked brand new.
I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked to for documenting, but I was really trying to just take it all in and “be in the moment.” However, I did get a few snaps.
I hope you’ve all had a great week! Until next time, happy sewing!
P.S. I cannot post this without saying that I’m just tickled to death over the end of Brangelina.
Cute Fluffin Stitch 
Oh, I just love quilt shows! I always spend way too much time (not to mention money) at the vendor section, but being the queen of quilting gadgets when not in my oneblockwonderwoman persona, I absolutely have to find out what I handy tool they have come out with now. I really dislike political themed quilts. This is one area where I think politics has no place, although it is interesting to see historic ones and can appreciate that we are now making quilts that will be historic one day perhaps, but it just rubs me the wrong way for some reason. I just never really got the far out there art “quilts”. Thank you for sharing your experiences it was fun going on a bit of the journey with you guild.