Stir Crazy Museum Show

From February 1st thru May 31st the Museum of San Ramon Valley in Danville, CA held a quilt show featuring quilts made during the confinement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The logo and mascot of the show was a wall hanging titled Quinevere, the Quarantine Queen. It was a whimsical, delightful entry with toilet paper rollers in her hair and a portrait of Dr. Fauci hanging on the wall over her shoulder. The Danville website headlined the show as 'Stir Crazy Quilts' brings pandemic creativity to Museum of the San Ramon Valley

I entered two quilts that met the date criterion for when I made them. I noted after the fact both of them were gray tones and I am usually a brights person. The were Fifty Shades of Taupe (blog post for 6/29/2020) and Christmas Cars (blog post for 12/18/2020). I visited them and the rest of the entered quilts in the show in February at an opening reception with my husband; later in March when my daughter and granddaughter were visiting from Oklahoma I visited again with them. After these photos is the text of the information I submitted with each quilt.

FIFTY SHADES OF TAUPE: In the spring 2013 edition of McCAll's America Makes Fast Quilts magazine, a modern quilt in neutral tones surprisingly caught my eye. Typically, I love bright and jewel tone colors and am not fond of modern minimalism. To stretch both my style and my color palette I bough the kit. Luckily, (and rarely), I even bought the backing! Both sat in my stash seven years, until February 2020 when I began piecing it, determined to work from my stash during the pandemic. Maybe the colors were now appropriately boring? In June I worked on improving my FMQ skills with clamshell and circle templates The colors were still dull to me but I could still add zip by the curvaceous quilting and a suggestive title.

CHRISTMAS CARS: In December of 2019 I'd bought a whimsical panel of 12 vehicles because the atypical red/yellow/gray Christmas color combination caught my eye. Determined during the pandemic to sew from my stash, I wanted a larger quilt so I added triangles on the edges to double the size of each block and give it an "on point" feel. A diamond header was inspired by a seminole patchwork class I took. I tried different FMQ patterns to grow my skill both free form and with templates. The backing is a cute Dalmatian print.

I volunteered one Tuesday in April as a docent for the show but, alas, I learned Tuesday is typically a slow day and my interactions with viewers were minimal. Nobody came until very near to closing time. There is more traffic on other days and the show did in general have a good turnout during its duration. I cannot begrudge my time reading and relaxing amongst quilts. Here are pictures I took during my various visits to the show, a subset to share and remember.

My apologies for these next two. I do not have sufficiently high resolution pictures of the identification cards but I these quilts called to me enough that I wanted to remember them in my DianeLoves2Quilt blog. I think I am developing an affinity for gray (left) and yet still I love my jewel tone brights (right).

On June 2nd, I went back to the museum and picked up my two quilts. I was glad I got off my duff and made the effort to participate. Time immersed in others' creativity is never wasted.