"Window into Home 2" by Natalya Aikens
We said we’d publicize the 2009 Quilting Arts “Celebrate Home” Calendar winners on May 23, but hey, the decision has been made so why keep mum about it? (Plus we want to display the winning quilts at Quilt Market in Portland later this week in our booth, and it really wouldn’t be fair of us to display those quilts without first letting you know, now would it!)
As usual, the decision was very difficult as the quilts that came into our offices were spectacular this time around. However, after much deliberation, the crew came up with a beautiful and inspiring assembly of quilts that I’m sure will delight.
I’d briefly mentioned in a previous post how we narrow the lot to a group of finalists, and once those quilts arrive, there are some intense discussions that take place. We each choose 13 of our favorites, then we meet as a group to discuss them, and lastly we begin laying them out by month. (This is actually one of the more heated annual discussions we have at Quilting Arts because we all feel so passionately about our choices!) We ask questions and move quilts around as we talk through the final grouping. Would this be a good January? Is this quilt representative enough for July? Would this quilt make a smashing cover? Did this artist interpret the theme closely enough? Do we have two blue quilts in a row and should we rethink the order we’ve placed them? Do we have a wide variety of styles?
When we stepped back from the lot, we noticed we had a rather diverse group of artwork for this particular calendar. All of the quilts are lovely, and we really hope you’ll enjoy the 2009 calendar as much as we plan to.
Congratulations to:
Natalya Aikens
Pleasantville, NY
Susan Mayfield
San Antonio, TX
Sylvia Naylor
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
Cait Gordon
Bunbury, Western Australia
Susan Brubaker-Knapp
Mooresville, NC
Polly Bean
Great Falls, VA
Tone Haugen-Cogburn
Maryville, TN
Judy Alexander
Marietta, GA
Marisa Landa-Love
Camarillo, CA
Donna Clauer
Bel Air, MD
Linda Nelson Johnson
Moscow, ID
Marianne Bettinger
Albuquerque, NM
Michelle Dobrin
Windsor, Ontario, Canada