Unpacking memories

Today I unpacked more boxes and ended up taking a trip down memory lane, starting with my quilting binders and quilt show bags. I made the collage self portrait for a show that I was in with PAQA -- the Professional Art Quilters Association -- when I lived in Illinois. That's really how I looked and dressed 20 years ago ...

My Illinois years were when I also belonged to a small art quilt group called FAABS that exhibited a lot in Northern Illinois. I had forgotten about the big FAABS binder I kept, but today I enjoyed paging through it and remembering all of our exhibits. It was my job to make the announcements and signage, like these:

Here we are at that 2003 "Celebrate Spring!" show at the Klehm Arboretum in Rockford. We always put out a big spread of colorful appetizers and desserts, and we dressed colorfully, too.

Then there was the box of quilt show bags going back to 1994. What do you do with all of those bags? Does anyone else keep them, along with the pins and ribbons? I just can't bear to throw them out, so my kids will have to deal with them when I go.

I went to the AQS show in 1994 because I had an outfit accepted into the fashion show and you had to model your own garment. I made a black and gold number called "Solstice Celebration," with the jacket based on Judy Murrah's "Jacket Jazz" book that was so popular back then. I also made a top to go under it and a crinkly, swirly skirt. It was mortifying to have to walk across the stage, and I don't remember a thing the announcer said about me.

Then I moved to El Paso, TX, and started going to the International Quilt Festival in Houston in 1995. It was at once overwhelming and immensely inspirational!

I had some quilts juried into that show, and those were the days when you had to submit slides of your work. I unpacked this thick binder of slides, which I took outside in natural light with a Nikon camera that had a great lens. Now you just take photos with a digital camera and submit them online, which is easier but the quality doesn't compare to that really good German lens that I had.

Along with the bags, I saved the show booklets. This one, from 2001, shows the floor plan of the Houston festival. It is enormous! All of the pink spaces are exhibits and the little numbered spaces are vendors. This is why they say to allow at least three days to see the show and to wear good walking shoes. In addition, there are hundreds of classes and lectures that go on upstairs at the convention center.

Then I moved to Rockford, IL, and was pleasantly surprised when IQF started a Chicago show just down the road. So I collected more bags!

Then I moved to Gig Harbor, WA, and went to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show in Oregon, which commissions an artist to do a special picture for each show. You can see here how gorgeous they are.

Now I'm in Arizona and will be on the lookout for more shows with bags!

I also unpacked a few books that brought memories flooding back. "Silver Pennies" is a collection of children's stories that I used to have read to me at bedtime. It is copyrighted 1925. I honestly don't remember the stories, but I do remember my dad reading "Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox" to me.

A little later, when I was a teen, I bought these two books by Richard Hittleman and used them to teach myself yoga and meditation. I wanted to reach nirvana. That didn't happen, but it did start me on my nearly 50-year yoga practice.

And then there is "The Desert Southwest," copyright 1987, which I bought when I lived in Illinois but dreamed of living in the Southwest. And now here I am! There, now I'm all caught up.

 Have a colorful day