Journal Quilt Project II: Elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire

The first JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT, “A Page from My Book,” was created in 2002 by Karey Patterson Bresenhan, director of the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Chicago, & Long Beach (www.quilts.com), to inspire creativity, experimentation, and growth among quilt artists. The JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT is a free-form exercise in creativity, specifically planned to encourage quilters and quilt artists to stretch and grow by trying new methods—experimenting with color, image, composition, materials, and/or technique. Keeping an informal journal to record influences on your experimental work and your own reactions to this work is part of the project, intended to show creative development and personal progress.

There are two major changes to the format of the project this year. The JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT II is a juried invitational with a theme. The theme for JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT II is “Elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.” Each quilt must somehow pertain to the theme. The size of the exhibit will be limited through the jurying process; not all entries will be accepted for the exhibition.

Jurors for the “Elements” exhibition of the Journal Quilt Project II will be Virginia Spiegel, quilt artist from Illinois and organizer/creator of the FIBERART For A Cause project, and Jeanne Williamson, originator of the Journal Quilt concept and author of The Uncommon Quilter.

All quilters who are donors to QuiltArt online (www.quiltart.com), regardless of their level of expertise or the country in which they reside, may submit work to be considered for inclusion in the exhibit. The Journal Quilt Project II, the first of a new series, will feature one piece from each participant juried into the exhibit. Each piece is to measure 17x 22 inches and must be created in a vertical orientation.

You are invited to submit work for consideration for the seventh edition of the JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT. Journal Quilt Project II: Elements will premiere at International Quilt Market and Festival, October 25-November 2, 2008. We will also retain quilts for exhibit at our spring edition of International Quilt Festival in Chicago April 17-19, 2009, our newest International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, California, July 24-26, 2009, and other possible venues.

You’ll find an application form following this announcement on our website. Each quilt must have its own form completed and sent to us with visuals to be considered for the exhibit. You may complete the form online and return it to us by e-mail or postal mail. We will accept hi-resolution JPEG or TIFF digital images. PLEASE SEND YOUR DIGITAL IMAGES TO spexentries@quilts.com. Please refer to the “Submitting Visuals Guidelines” document posted on our website (www.quilts.com under “Contests”) for details.

Completed submissions with visuals must be received in our office by Friday, August 1, 2008. You will be notified by e-mail no later than Friday, August 22, 2008, regarding the quilts to be included in this exhibit along with shipping instructions. The selected quilts will need to arrive in Houston no later than Friday, September 26, 2008. If your quilt is selected, it will be returned to you no later than January 31, 2010.

We look forward to hearing from you! If you have any questions, please contact Amanda Schlatre, Special Projects Assistant, at 713.781.6864 ext. 104, spprojects@quilts.com; or Vicki Mangum, Manager of Special Exhibits, at ext. 106, spexhibits@quilts.com

Copyright clearances are the artist’s responsibility.

Journal Quilt Project II: Elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire

The Specifics

1. Each Journal Quilt will consist of one quilt only.

2. Each quilt must finish to 17 x 22 inches and be made with a vertical orientation so that it will hang vertically. Because of the hanging method, horizontal pieces cannot be accepted.

3. Each quilt is to consist of three layers; however, you are not required to use batting. All three layers should be held together by stitching.

4. Each quilt must be finished on all four sides either by binding, serging, use of embroidery or other decorative stitches, zig-zag stitching, etc. The type of finishing used is not important as this is part of the experimental nature of the project, but your finishing technique must not cause your quilt to extend beyond the size of 17 x 22 inches.

5. Each quilt must have a sleeve sewn to the back for hanging purposes. Specific instructions for making this sleeve will be sent to accepted artists in August. Do not attach a sleeve before receiving these instructions.

6. New for this year: a theme. The theme for JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT II is “Elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.” Each quilt must somehow pertain to the theme, featuring the phenomena of the great forces of nature—earth, water, air, and fire—together or any one of them singly. The power or magnitude (elemental grandeur) of these forces are inspirational in and of themselves.

7. An important part of the JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT II is keeping an ongoing record, a journal or diary of influences on your work, on what you were hoping to achieve by participating, on your own reaction to your experiments and the different techniques or design approaches you may have tried. This is not a test of your writing ability but is an attempt to reveal the inner workings of a quilt artist’s mind—what inspires you, what challenges you, how you meet those challenges, what influences you, how those influences show up in your work, etc. Record this information in an ongoing journal on your computer. You can then edit, as needed, the journaling for the one-page Artist’s Statement for the JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT II. Specific directions on attaching this statement to your sleeve and quilt will be sent to accepted artists in August.

8. No prizes or awards will be offered. New for this year: the exhibit will be juried. A qualified jury will select the works to be included in the exhibit. The jury’s decision is final. Upon seeing the final quilts, the organizers reserve the right to decide which quilts will be included in the exhibition. The organizers reserve the right to refuse any work that does not match the digital photos submitted to the jury.

9. Deadline: If your quilt is juried into the exhibit, specific shipping instructions will be sent to you with announcement of your acceptance, as well as the instructions for the sleeve and the Artist’s Statement. Each Journal Quilt must reach the Houston offices of the International Quilt Festival, ready to hang, no later than Friday, September 26, 2008. (Please note that this is a receive by deadline, not a postmark deadline.) A minimum of $20 (U.S.), either by check drawn on a U.S. bank or by providing a valid MasterCard/Visa number and expiration date should be included at this time. This fee will cover a small handling fee and return shipping costs via U.S. Postal Service. If you prefer another method of shipping, such as FedEx or UPS, which may cost more than USPS, you are responsible for ascertaining that cost and for paying this shipping cost in addition to the $20 minimum.

12. To keep this year’s Journal Quilts fresh in the public eye, and to make sure that the exhibit at the show is exciting to the viewers, participants juried into the JOURNAL QUILT PROJECT II are requested to keep the images of their Journal Quilts confidential until the show is in progress. This means, for example, not posting your quilt on your own webpage or blog or on the web pages or blogs of others and not soliciting or participating in publicity about your quilt unless such publicity is arranged by or approved by the International Quilt Festival.

13. While there is no submission fee attached to this exhibit, each submitting artist must be a paid participant in the online group, QuiltArt. (Although Quilt Festival is a sponsor of QuiltArt, we are not otherwise affiliated with QuiltArt.) To join QuiltArt and make your $15 donation, go to www.quiltart.com

To see images of the 2007 Journal Quilts, visit http://www.quiltart.com/2007journals/index.html