Opening Night- The Power of The Flower

Opening Night of the Power Suit Art Quilt Show was a smashing success!! Cyndi Souder of Moonlighting Quilts and Judy Gula ,proprietress of Artistic Artifacts did a fabulous job with this first challenge from start to finish!! It was such fun to be there to see all of the wonderful quilts and to see all of the artist's various takes on the concept of Power Suit. Each artist had the choice of using the sample books of shirt fabrics and suit fabrics that were a part of each challenge pack. Other fabrics could be added and it was not required that the sample fabrics be used at all.

The only thing that would have made the evening better was to have had all of the Art Quilt Artists in attendance! As it was we had about 50 of us artists there. The place was packed with visitors and artists. It was such fun!!

This is a picture of Judy, on the right and Cyndi, on the left, making announcements and introducing the next Challenge. Many of us almost did not recognize Judy the Glamorous!! We all know Judy the Artist. Last night she had a new , beautiful hair cut, had on make up and was wearing serious pumps!!!

There were 108 art quilts from 105 artists from all across America and Canada. 160 art packets were handed out and 108 were returned!!!!! Judy and Cyndi said that they would have been thrilled to get back 50- needless to say they are overwhelmed with the response and the beautiful quilts! Each quilt measures 18 inches by 18 inches.

So the quilts: I took lots of pictures and I am going to just post them for you now!!

Hear is Cyndi Souder standing by the portrait of her Dad. this is her very first Portrait quilt and it is a stunner!! the shading and the detail and use of fabrics is amazing! Such talent!!

Judy ended up creating two quilts. Her quilts were all about the Suffragettes that marched on Washington back in the 20's. Many of the women pictured here were imprisoned in Lorton Penitentiary. This prison has now been converted into a marvelous art center, called the Workhouse.

It was so fascinating to look at each of these art quilts and see where or if each artists had used the fabric samples that had been part of the Challenge Packs.

This is my quilt -Power of the Flower. In my piece I took all of the light colored shirting fabrics and sun printed them with a plastic doily used as a mask. I also used the doily to sun print the darker shirting fabrics with green paint to make the leaves. The leaves are double sided so I could attach them so as to allow them to have dimension. I used suiting samples to create the vases and the background is a sun printed piece of damask linen splashed with rock salt to achieve the mottling effect. I used all of the buttons in the challenge packet along with many of my own vintage buttons as the flower centers. Each of the flowers is represented by a Yo Yo - a very old quilting technique that was used for making wonderful scrap coverlets.

If you click on the above picture it will enlarge so you can read my artists statement. Basically I did not want to go with the literal representation of the Power Suit. As it is hard to have much respect for most of the men and women who wear suits and hold power in the world these days, I went with flower power because of all of the impact that gardening , growing and flowers have had in my own life. Agriculture has such power in our world, the power to feed and to purify water and hold back mountainsides. It has the potential for changing our world for the better in the future if we will only embrace the concept of climate change and act now to protect our environment. So Yah , I guess that if you really look in the weeds, I did get political! Who me?????

That would be me with my quilt.

This was one of my favorites. We were tasked with picking the quilt that made us Think, the quilt that made us Laugh and the quilt that was our Favorite. This was an impossible task- I really liked them all! I just loved the whole Birthday Suit Idea and the way it was accomplished!


I met the gal who made this quilt titled Cognition. She has a degree in Physics and works for NASA in Greenbelt Maryland. Amy was delightful and I really enjoyed her piece. She had drawn all sorts of numerical equations around the cogs that she made out of the wool suitings that she had felted. Clever Girl!! The bottom border piece is a piece of waistband from a pair of jeans. She said that her power suit- daily attire- was a pair of jeans so she had to include it!

This quilt titled Victorian Power Suit was made by my good friend Linda Morgan. Linda is a doll and a very talented collage artist who works primarily with paper. You would never know that she was not a textile artist after looking at this piece! I believe that this is her very first quilt!!!! This piece is amazing! She did all of the bead work and the back ground is layered with the suitings and all sorts of laces and then beads and buttons. The skirts of this gal are made from men's ties!! I just adore this piece!
Her is a picture of the artist herself standing below her wonderful quilt!! She had so much fun that she ahs signed on for the Arts and Old Lace Challenge!! Way to go Linda!!

this wonderful piece is titled Flower Power by renowned Art Quilt Artist Jamie Fingal!! It was so exciting to see Jamie's work in person. Her work has a very specific color and style and i knew instantly that this was her piece!!! Jamie is a wonderful gal and an awesome artist, click on her name and stop by her blog for a visit! Jamie described her power suit as being made of color and fun and flowers- Perfection!!

This quilt really caught my eye because of the unique construction of the arm with the hand doing the hand shaking. So cool!

This quilt made me chuckle!! i love the way the artist depicted the Evolution of the Power Suit! So clever!!!

this quilt really caught my eye because of the intricate work done to construct the 3-D figures of the Train Engineer and Conductor. I don't remember what the artists statement said but I am thinking that there must have been some railroad men in the artists family history!! Beautifully done!

This quilt was very eye catching and beautifully made!! The men's shirt fabrics were the back ground for this fabulous rendition of the Wonder Woman suit of Power!!

this was an unusual quilt for this topic. You can see that the pennants were made from the suiting fabrics. I loved the color in this quilt but again unfortunately, I don't remember the artist's statement.

I really love the graphic quality of this quilt. I have a very hard time doing monochromatic work and I always am drawn to it when I see it so beautifully crafted. The right hand side of this piece is actually made from an old tux complete with studs!

This quilt is full of family history and great collage techniques.

This is a beautiful quilt titled Pearls. the artist speaks of the power women in her life when she was growing up and their power suits were always finished off with a classic strand of pearls!! I love how she did the tiny patchwork background and then did the wonderful bead embroidery with the pearls .

The color and the concept of this piece really caught my eye. It is called Skin Deep. Being a scientist by training, I immediately got what the artists was saying here with her quilt. She said that" We are all born with our own Power Suit- our skin." this is her anatomical representation of the layers of our skin, our largest and super powerful and important organ!!! Love it!!

These portraits of four dogs are beautifully done to depict the artists version of a Power Suit!!

There were several quilts about the environment in and around Washington DC. One cannot live in this area and get far away from it for long. The frustration on all sides is palpable. This quilt made me chuckle because of the depiction of the Suits with their pants on Fire!! Clever!!! It really reflects the frustration that we all have with Congress!!

This beautiful piece was the only quilt in the show done in a Crazy Quilt style. This was made by Art Quilt artist Brian Haggard. Brain was the only man that entered a piece in the challenge. Maybe with the next challenge we will get submissions by a few more men. Art Quilts are not just for girls you know! this piece is beautifully done and I was really pleased to hear that Judy had just received Brian's new book ! the book is called Crazy Quilted Memories and it is a beautifully done, new take on crazy quilting!! I am pleased to have it to add to my textile book collection. Brian really comes at Crazy Quilts in a whole new way and the directions, samples and embroidery and embellishment ideas are very inspiring!!

Cat Woman in The Capital was a popular favorite!

As was this anime style character that was made by an artist who works in the comic book industry!! It was all so fascinating!!

I have several more quilts to share with you but it is getting very late and I am afraid that I am going to make a mistake and loose all of the work that I have done on the post thus far.

SOooo, I am going to say good Night and come back tomorrow and share the remaining quilts that I have pictures of. I hope that you have enjoyed the show so far, there is so much more to see than what I have shown you here!!