Special Exhibits - Fall 2024

The 19th Century Patchwork Divas began in 1997 as a block exchange group, organized by Carol Staelhe and Betsy Chutchian, focusing on recreating antique quilts with the new readily available reproduction fabrics. What began as a small group of friends grew into a 22-member group connected by a mutual passion for antique quilts of the 19th century. Inspiration for the exchanges comes from the quilts the women made years ago to comfort their families and beautify their homes.

International Quilt Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary with this incredible display or red, white, and blue quilts, dramatically hanging from the ceiling. The roots of Festival began in 1974 when Founder Karey Bresenhan opened an antique store in Houston that soon became a quilt shop (Great Expectations Quilts). The next year, she held a “thank you” show, sale, and event for customers. Expecting 200 attendees, more than 2,000 showed up in very inclement weather. Over the years, at larger and larger venues, Festival has become the world’s largest quilt show, sale, and Quiltmaking Academy. Tens of thousands of attendees from every state in the U.S. and dozens of countries come to Houston each fall to celebrate the artistry, creativity, and love of quilting.

After 20 years of quilting, Anna Maria has unearthed the essence of how she designs quilts based on overall structural features. Discovering this about her process inspired this body of work where she focuses on a few structures and then varies those themes in multiple ways. Anna Maria said “It feels safe and joyful to have some parameters, yet exciting and challenging to find diversity in palette, technique, and composition. Letting go of ‘my style of quilting’ and simply engaging all my interests was splendid.”

Lisa Ellis has had a long love affair with the textures and complexity of the overlapping circles of the Cathedral Window design. She was inspired to create this collection when she unearthed a quilt her grandmother made in the 1970s, a Cathedral Window made by hand on a muslin background. She played with the method her grandmother used to design the blocks but realized that she needed to take a different approach. Ellis developed her own construction technique, which can be pieced entirely by machine. She has worked within this series since 2015 and is still exploring its creative possibilities.

Art is an excellent way to express feelings. For this exhibit, artists depicted how they, a family member, or a friend celebrated a loved one’s wedding, birth, birthday, or memorial. Colors, patterns, traditional blocks, or abstract drawings are combined or used alone to convey a plethora of emotions across the spectrum.

The works exhibited this time were meticulously crafted by Taiwanese quilting teachers, many of which have been previously showcased in places such as China and Japan.

Eleven gorgeous antique quilt tops were lovingly quilted by Teresa Duryea Wong on a modern longarm quilting machine with hand-guided techniques and no computers. The story of each maker is lost to time, but her quilt is now finally finished. These objects span decades—even a century—and Wong has created a 21st-century narrative for each quilt by naming it in honor of her ancestors and family.

Artists from all around the world incorporate influences from their own cultures into the design and technique of their quilts. This prestigious, long-running international showcase includes recent quilts by international artists inspired by their culture, geography, and surroundings.

Two great Houston Institutions have come together for International Quilt Festival to present the Blue-Ribbon Winning quilts from the 2024 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (HLSR). We’re sure you’ll enjoy the quilts of Texas, with winners here in both the Adult and Juvenile categories. To participate in the HLSR quilt competition in 2025, check their website.

Just as quilters create beautiful pieces of art with fabric, florists and gardeners cultivate works of beauty from the soil. This exhibit showcases floral-inspired quilts from across the spectrum in lush color and splendor.

Contemporary quiltmakers often look to the art form’s rich tradition and history for inspiration for their own works. This exhibit features recently made quilts that incorporate traditional blocks, styles, and/or techniques.

From valleys and volcanoes to mountains and monuments, landscapes often inspire artists, including many in the quilt world. This expansive exhibit showcases many stunning geographical wonders.

Through Lines is a collection of quilts from QuiltCons 2022-2024 that were displayed in a variety of categories. These quilts use the line—that most basic of design elements—in effective and interesting ways. Whether pieced, quilted, or just created with a seam, the line is a key component in these striking modern quilts.

Modern quilts often take traditional blocks and reinterpret them through the use of solid-colored fabrics or give them a new twist by using negative space, minimal repeats, improvisational piecing, and gridding for quilting. A modern quilt can be pieced or appliquéd. This exhibit showcases amazing modern quilts from talented artists.

Over 20 years, Karen G. Fisher’s quilts have celebrated three main interests: the southern Arizona desert she calls home, Medieval Art History, and the Earth Sciences, especially geology and astronomy. Her lifelong art education has kept her trying—and even inventing—new techniques to achieve the effects she wanted in her designs.

Paula Nadelstern is a “Patternista” hardwired to see patterns everywhere. For over 35 years, she has filtered her design inspiration through a kaleidoscopic lens, resulting in a personal quilt idiom. Employing a technique that is counterintuitive to the conventional quilting process, she obscures the seams that join the intricate patchwork, encouraging an uninterrupted flow of design or color from one patch to the next and creating the illusion that there are no seams at all.

Every year, Cherrywood chooses a theme and color palette and presents a challenge to quilters from all over the world. The challenge is to see what you can create using a very limited number of colors and show the beautiful suede look of their hand-dyed fabrics. This year’s theme is “poppy” and the fabrics are a gorgeous collection of eight colors of reds, red-oranges, blue-grays, and greens. Prepare to be captivated as artists push the boundaries, weaving threads, paints, pencils, inks, and beads into a symphony of colors that transcend imagination.

Though they work behind the scenes, International Quilt Festival could not be produced (or enjoyed by tens of thousands of attendees) without the hard-working members of The Piece Corps. These ladies and gentlemen—all expertly skilled and trained—are crucial to the show and responsible for receiving, hanging, taking down, and shipping back all of the quilts on display. They work very close to these amazing works of art, and many are talented creators themselves. This exhibit features works by members of The Piece Corps with a wide variety of techniques, styles, and subject matter.

This exhibit features 50 miniature quilts by sisters Andrea Blackhurst and Ellen Carter. Their miniatures were previously featured at Festival’s 40th anniversary Ruby Jubilee Celebration in 2014, and again for the 45th Sapphire Celebration in 2019. The works here are miniature versions of traditional quilts, this year done in red, white, and blue to complement the color scheme for Festival’s 50th anniversary. It is also a companion exhibit to “50 Years of Great Quilts.”

Sacred Threads is an exhibition of quilts exploring themes of joy, inspiration, spirituality, healing, grief, and peace/brotherhood. This biennial exhibition was established to provide a safe venue for quilters who see their work as a connection to the sacred and/or as an expression of their spiritual journey. The hope is that visitors experience healing and strength through the stories of this powerful exhibition.

Nature produces an endless array of colors, shapes, and patterns that creatures use to fool the eye. These animals become visible only when they move or are in contrasting surroundings. Creatures may disguise themselves to blend in by changing color on demand or with the seasons, allowing plants to grow on them, or by evolving to look like something else. The chameleon is known for changing its colors, but many other animals have this ability, including bugs, fish, octopuses, foxes, and rabbits. See many of them in this exhibit featuring work by members of the Studio Art Quilt Associates.

This exhibit features works on the very important theme of ecology and how humans interact—in both positive and negative ways—with the planet. Through their work, artists here strive to be a voice of change. Artistic visions include topics of climate change, pollution, natural disasters, and drought.

This eclectic grouping of quilts showcases over 100 years of diversity and talent put forth by America’s unnamed quiltmakers. Shared by private collectors, these beautiful bedcoverings are filled with fine workmanship, expressing each maker’s sense of identity using pattern, color, and composition. Though the makers’ histories have been silenced by time, their creativity and artistry remain with us today.

Buildings have a long history of inspiring the creative designs of quiltmakers. In the 19th century, American quilters developed classic architectural patterns such as Log Cabin, Schoolhouse, and Brick Wall. This annual juried exhibit challenges quiltmakers to create works based on architectural themes and inspirations. The quilt may be Traditional, Modern, or Art.

This is a collaboration between two artists featuring West Africa’s earliest quilt tradition by Chief (Mrs.) Nike Okundaye. Her influence and works from the 1960s have impacted the younger generation of African artists and are hand-sewn quilts that utilize embroidery. Uzoma Samuel, as the second artist, will showcase his contemporary portrait quilts. This fusion is to present the evolution of Africa's fabric art—both ancient and modern—and stories of heritage.

Intentionally ambiguous might be a way of identifying this body of work. This exhibit includes artwork from 2014 to the present. Sherri Lipman McCauley’s intention is to fill the gallery walls with some of her favorite pieces. The union of paints and dyes with fabric is her forte. Using paints, dyes, fabrics, and threads is the goal to heighten the recognition of art quilts as fine art.

Words are a design element in many ways. This exhibit shows what artists can do with words dyed, painted, or pieced on fabric. Throughout, words and fabric merge to form unique statements.

Sharyn Resvick’s interest in quilt history led her to create a series of small quilts that represent styles which span over two-and-a-half centuries of quiltmaking. Many of the quilts are simple in design, but the real beauty is in their telling of the rich story of history from the first medallion quilts of the early 1800s to the Depression-era quilts of the early 1900s, to the sampler quilts seen after the second quilt revival of the 1970s, and on up to the modern quilts of today.

Georgia Williams’ art quilts serve as vibrant reflections of visual Black history, unveiling lesser-known narratives. Each stitch weaves a story—illuminating overlooked facts and celebrating the resilience, creativity, and contributions of African Americans. These textile masterpieces serve as powerful tools for education, fostering a deeper understanding of the rich tapestry of black history. Williams hopes that while looking at her pieces, viewers will be engaged enough to further explore these topics.