Every year, we make at least one if not two ‘pilgrimages’ to the Quilt Museum in La Conner, Washington. It’s a lovely old Victorian home with three floors of quilt exhibits that rotate quarterly and showcase the work of local, regional and international quilt artists.
The largest annual fundraiser is a Quilt Festival featuring juried and judged quilts and fiber artists from around the world. The Festival is accompanied by four days of quilt events, workshops, silent auction and specialty vendors. For more info: http://www.laconnerquilts.com/
I recently learned that my latest piece, Family Ties, has been juried into this year’s Quilt Festival Show in the Traditional, Mixed category. I’m very excited. This quilt represents the lives of my family and contains a lot of complex symbolism. The lone star, tree and leaves are my father’s recycled ties. The lace collar was made by my mother, dyed by me. The pictures are of my parents and siblings and printed on silk.
The intertwined bias strips in the tree represent myself and my siblings and our life interactions. The leaves represent my parents’ joy in their eight grandchildren.
The seven tie points at the bottom of the wall hanging represent the seven children, the large brown “B” tie point represents my father, Guy Bingham; and the seven connected lace points represent my mother, Rose, and her impact on all our lives.
I had the most fun embellishing this piece…the same sized copper colored beads for my father’s stable, enduring and loving influence; the wonderful, varied color and sized beads for my mother’s creativity and the love that blossomed into it’s greatest impact with the advent of grandchildren. Commemorating these relationships through quilting has confirmed life’s beauty and brought for me, closure to the loss of all but one of my siblings.
Seeing all the winners from previous years leads me to doubt the promise of a prize winning piece in this show; however; a juried piece brings a reward in and of itself.