"Voices in Cloth" Quilt Show

Some of the fabric that came home with me

    Yesterday, the Craneway Pavillion was full of  people looking at quilts, buying from vendors, eating, or chatting with people they ran into.  I saw at least half of my world there yesterday,  people I hadn't seen in years, plus people from my pool class, from my former place of employment, and of course from my quilt group.

My friend Lin, who came with me, was introduced countless times as "my-friend- Lin-who-went-to-high-school-with-me," sometimes with "We reconnected with on Facebook" added.  She was very patient, I thought.  And appreciative of quilts, much more judicious in her appreciation of them than I was, noticing many details I missed.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the day was running into my pool chums, Anne and Valerie.  They reported that two women standing in front of one of my quilts commented that it was their favorite quilt.  Val, who is English, hastened to tell them,"We know the ah-tist!"  I loved that.

I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked to. Here are few, and some don't do justice to the quilts.   I've included my own two quilts, by special request from a reader, even though I've posted photos of them earlier.

The first four quilts  are from a Special Exhibit, "Ancestral Memories," quilts made by members of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland.

Detail of  "From Slavery to the White House," by the Betty Shabazz Academy of San Francisco and the Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority

A view of most of "From Slavery to the White House", dress square at lower left

"All My Roads Lead Back to You," Alice Beasley. 
The quilter wrote, "A portrait of my mother as a saucy three-year old c. 1914 sitting on her father's knee."

Detail of "All My Roads Lead Back to You,"  the child's foot extending beyond the bottom edge of the quilt

"Mount Diablo" by Susan Fuller. I include this as an example of something I can't imagine being able to do, a representational landscape.

"Twig Salad" by Priscilla Read

"Cracker Two, by Rebecca Rohrkaste. The reds are actually less orange, and there's a beautiful and subtle variety of them.

"Free Fall" by Ann Rhode.  One of the few hand-quilted pieces I saw.

"Fresh Fruit" by Susan Fuller, a remarkably detailed and beautifully rendered representation of fruit

"Autumn Kaleidoscope" by Pepper Sbarbaro

And my own:

"Circles and Squares," designed and pieced by me; machine quilted by Angie Woolman

"Snowscape"
 Rebecca stepped in and hung this quilt lower after I took the photo. Also machine quilted by Angie Woolman