More than 800 quilts attempted to showcase at the 32nd American Quilter’s Society annual Paducah show. Only half of those made it to the viewing room. As attendees enter the exposition center, they are welcomed by hundreds of hanging fine art fabric pieces, diverse in color and creative inspiration.
“I’m Marilyn Badger and I’m from St. George, Utah. My quilt Arandano just won best of show and I am totally thrilled.”
Badger’s quilt is just one of the 406 quilts chosen for display at the 2016 Paducah Quilt Festival.
“I have been entering contests for probably 15 years, and all of my quilts have been made for competition. This is the first quilt I made just for me. Then after about a year and half of working on it I thought, well maybe it is good enough to put somewhere,” says Badger.
As one of more than 30,000 attending quilters, Badger’s skill, like many others at the event, represents a craft that has been transformed into fine art.
Executive Show Director for the American Quilter’s Society Bonnie Browning says Badger’s quilt was clearly a winning piece
“I’m sure when the judges were looking at this they would have been looking at the scale of the different elements the way she placed the colors. You can see she has used a tremendous amount of beading to highlight different areas and then of course it’s quilted.She made this on a long arm sewing machine, so the quilting was all done with one of those big heads where you drive the head of the machine and the quilt stays stationary,” says Browning.
Browning points to a Long Arm Machine being displayed by a vendor at the show.
“Some quilters are buying them to start a business some are buying them for their own personal use. If you bought the whole set I think it runs $30-35 thousand dollars,” says Browning.
The long arm is a computerized sewing machine that is large enough to require a room of its own. The categories for competition at the show are separated between hand crafted and machine produced because creating a quilt by hand in the same time and depth of detail would be impossible against a machine of this caliber.
Andrea Brokenshire is the winner of this year’s Best Wall Home Machine Workmanship piece.
“There is quite an investment in my pieces,” says Brokenshire.
The quilter says she spent at least 800 hours to finish her winning piece titled “A passion for purple.”
“Hello, I’ve missed you, I haven’t seen you in a really long time,” says Brokenshire as she gently touches her quilt now hanging for others to visually and emotionally connect with.
Brokenshire says she has been sewing since she was 5. Around ten years ago the quilter began incorporating paint into her pieces.
“This flower is a Clematis I photographed in Oregon. The bloom just looked like it was reaching for the sun, so I thought oh my god I have to take that, so click click click click, lots of pictures.”
Entries from 48 states and 15 different countries registered, so just making it on the wall for some is winning.Four of the entries at the show received cash prizes. The Best of Show piece is awarded a $20,000 purchase prize. If accepted, the quilt will be sent to the National Quilt Museum to hang in a permanent collection series.
“There is no museum in the world that has the same caliber of quilts in it as the national quilt museum here in Paducah so I think it is everyone’s goal to get a quilt in the museum,” says Browning.
According to Browning Paducah has become a “mecca” of quilting simply because of the caliber of quilts that continue to showcase here in the competition and then remain in Paducah in the museum.
In 2014 the AQS commissioned an economic impact study which found that each quilt show brings in at least $25.4 million dollars. Because of the significant amount of revenue generated Browning says in 2017 the AQS, for the first time, will have a second quilt show in addition to their spring show.
Browning isn’t concerned about burnout, she says quilting is growing in numbers and interest. More men than ever are joining their wives in the craft. Browning says at least 5 % of quilters are men.
“Quilters can be tall and short and fat or any different age, when you come together it's just talking quilting, so we are all in the same playing field,” says Browning.
Editor's Note: Audio Coming Soon
