The Quilt Alliance's annual small quilt auction is now underway on eBay. There are 31 quilts in the first week ready to find a new home. Artists from 28 U.S. states and 7 countries entered the "Inspired By" contest and donated their entry to benefit the Alliance.
This year's theme links the contest quilts to our core and partnership projects in a new and exciting way. Each artist identified a quilt selected from The Quilt Index repository or the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories oral history collection.
The Quilt Index (
www.QuiltIndex.org) is an online resource with more than 62,000 records of quilt images and data contributed to the Index by state and regional documentation projects, museums, historical societies, guilds, and private collectors. The Index is a partnership project of the Quilt Alliance, Michigan State University Museum and MATRIX: Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at MSU.
Jean Van Bockel of Boise, Idaho, entered and donated her piece, "The Darwin Quilt" (pictured at top), a hand appliqued, embroidered and machine quilted small wall quilt (all entries are 16"x16").
Bockel was inspired by a quilt (pictured above) formally titled "Garden of Eden," made in 1874 by Josephine Miller Adkins, that is now part of the permanent collection of the DAR Museum. In her artist's statement Bockel explains why this entirely handmade quilt moved her:
"Her [Adkin's] family called it the Biblical Stories Quilt. It was made right after Darwin's theory of evolution was published, This shocking new concept stirred up controversy around the world and is still debated 140 years later. I took design ideas from Josephine's quilt but used bright colors, added a Darwin fish and put a monkey on the tree of knowledge."
This stunning quilt along with 30 others is featured in the first of three auction weeks. All of this week's quilts can be seen on the
Quilt Alliance's eBay listings page here. Week one will conclude on Monday, November 17 at 9 pm ET. Week two runs from Nov. 17-24 and Week three runs from Nov. 24-Dec. 1. Each auction week begins and ends at 9 pm ET. (See
How to Bid on eBay, below left, if you are a newbie to eBay.)
Here are a few other week one auction quilts side-by-side with their inspiration quilt.
"True Love" by Jame Fingal of California (left) inspired by "Double Wedding Ring" by Elizabeth Ann Miller Bontrager of Illinois c. 1955 (right).
""Blue Crossing" by Sherri Lipman McCauley of Texas (left) inspired by "Circling Around" by Barbara Harrell of Arizona, 2007 (right).
"Lollipop Garden" by Lisa Ellis of Virginia (left) inspired by "Scrap Bag Bouquet" by Tom Russell of Texas, 2011 (right).
September 25-27, 2015
