A Puppy and Her Quilt
I reported recently on an exhibit at the Iowa Quilt Museum—a display of amazing studio art quilts depicting people and animals curated by Diane Murtha. (“Threads of Life” runs through September 15, 2024, so you still have time to see it.)
Like everyone everywhere, quilters love their furry, four-pawed friends, so it’s not surprising that thread-painted dogs and cats are among the works on display.
Check out these pieces from the exhibit.
Quiltfolk (based in Oregon), well aware that quilters adore their hounds, put out a call a couple of years ago inviting their subscribers and social media followers to submit canine quilted portraits. Editors received 258 entries, curated them down to 44, and published them in a special-edition volume, Quiltfolk Dogs.
Quiltfolk Dogs was such a hit, Quiltfolk recently invited its audience to submit quilted portraits of—you guessed it—cats. The deadline for submission is August 31, 2024, so ladies, unless you have a cat quilt on your “done” pile, you’d best get busy.
I’m a traditional quilter who makes mostly bed quilts, most of them inspired by nineteenth century quilts, which means I have not created a fabric-and-thread portrait of my dog Scrabble. Here’s an example of my work. This style of quilt is sometimes called a frame quilt, because it has numerous borders, or frames.
I did make a dog-themed quilt once, but it depicted a generic dog (maybe a spaniel?), not Scrabble. Puppy Pals showcased a line of dog-themed cotton fabrics. See the tiny paw prints on the black and white print framing the puppy blocks?
When Scrabble was a puppy, however, I gave her a small quilt for her very own. It was a Log Cabin I made early in my quilting career. I was learning to hand quilt at the time, and on that long-ago Log Cabin, I perfected my hand quilting stitch, gradually getting it down to eleven stitches per inch.
Within a couple of years, as puppies are wont to do, Scrabble (whose nickname is Puppykins) had shredded her quilt to fabric smithereens. A day came when it was so deconstructed and stinky I was afraid to put it in the washing machine. (I stuffed it deep in the trash bin when she was out in the back yard, barking at something.)
However, back when Scrabble and her relationship with her blankie were young, I taught her to fetch all kinds of things, including her quilt. Her fetching skill was captured on video.
I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of over 60 journalists and authors writing from and about the great state of Iowa. Access all of us here.