Our special guest bloggers in February are Joan Ciolino and Bill Volckening. 

Joan's story, "Labors of Love – Quilts with Heart," is a heart-felt reflection on the special memories that family quilts hold for us: "February is the month for giving and receiving expressions of love.  Mothers, fathers, friends and dear ones all given love tokens in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, mediums, and all-important flavors of chocolate.  I have always considered quilts to be among the greatest expression of love, but only recently have I fully appreciated the depth and scope of their significance."  Read more…

Bill shares the story of one of the quilts in his collection and his search for the story behind it, including meeting its famous maker, Lucy Mingo: "The quilt was attributed to Polly Raymond, daughter of Lucy Mingo.  Raymond was one of ten children, seven girls, but I didn’t know anything more. <…> Lucy Mingo was part of the Freedom Quilting Bee of the 1960s and 70s.  She was an active participant in the Civil Rights movement, and marched to Selma, Alabama, with Martin Luther King, Jr., to protest for the right to vote."  Read more…

 

Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival:
Photos & Observations

Shelly Zegart, "Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics" Host and Executive Producer, shares her insights from the festival: "I am just back from the largest quilt show in the world – almost 300,000 people over 8 days – The Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival.  It is astonishing to be at this Festival because it is held in the Tokyo Dome where baseball and rock concerts and other events are staged.  It seats more then 55,000 people, so to see the long lines of Japanese women waiting to buy tickets and get into the show was not the norm there. This is the 11th year for the Festival.  This year it was Antique Hexagon quilts from America.  The exhibit was designed with hexagon shaped rooms for the quilts-quite amazing.  Quilts were borrowed from Laura Fisher at Fisher Heritage in New York, The Charleston Museum, The Schwenkenfelder Center, Andy Hirsch, Eleanor Bingham Miller, and The New England Quilt Museum."  Read more…

See photos from The Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival in 2012: