Hollis Chatelain is a friend of mine and she has done something amazing. She has gathered together 12 of her most powerful quilts and paired them with 14 black and white photographs by prominent photographers for a major exhibition called Imagine Hope. If you are going to Paducah, you'll have an opportunity to be one of the first to see this exhibit.

Please join Hollis April 20, 2010 from 3:00 to 5:00 PM to celebrate the opening of The Imagine Hope Exhibition at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky.

Our hope is that this exhibition becomes much more than a show. Hollis’ vision is that her quilts will help us not just imagine hope, but help provide it by confronting the issues and working toward solutions.

The exhibition will be shown April 9 through May 25, 2010.

For more information, please contact The National Quilt Museum.

To view some of the work and find out more about the non-profit Imagine Hope Worldwide Foundation, please visit Imagine Hope Worldwide. AND watch the video below!

I'm machine quilting this week and probably next week. I like to bury the tails of thread at all my starts and stops. I usually bury them as I go rather than waiting until the whole quilt is finished. Judy Mathieson told me about easy threading needles that she uses for this task. They are an amazing time saver! Thank you Judy! Watch the movie to see how they work.

Here's a close-up of the needle. The brand I found was Mary Arden in sizes 4/8. If I can talk Linda into it, we can put these or something like them on our site.

Barb Vlack shared the link to this article from the Wall Street Journal. Long haul truckers have discovered hand work!

If you have ordered anything from our website recently, you have been working with our very fine Piece O' Cake staff. Linda is the fearless leader of web sales. Go Linda! Paul is her right-hand man (although he is, in fact, left handed).

That's Paul and Lori making kits in the doorway of Linda and Paul's dining room. Truth be told, Linda said she was going to be happy to get her dining room back after the kits are all packed.

And this is Michelle, busily processing your orders. Linda has re-arranged this room since the last time I was there. It looks good! At some point I can show you my work space (if there are requests).

I wrote
recently about color and pattern and value. This photo (found on Sarah Herman's blog, I Like This Blog)  is a wonderful example that illustrates that it is a
difference in value that makes one fabric stand apart from another.

Many of you will probably remember the World Quilt Federation Smackdown that John Flynn, Sue Nickels, Hollis Chatelaine and I took part in. We each made a small quilt that was auctioned off in a head-to-head auction and all the money raised went to benefit the Alzheimers Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI). Ami Simms is the driving force behind AAQI and she just wrote a $30,000 check to fund research led by Dr. Mi Hee Lim at the University of Michigan. You can read about the check-writing day on Ami's blog, Through The Eyes Of A Quilter.

Ami sent me this photo that was taken that day by Jennifer Farina, University of Michigan. Ami took a handful of quilts to share. One of them happened to be my quilt from the current exhibit.
 
Ami (far right) is showing the research team my quilt, helping them to learn about Alzheimer's from a different perspective. The woman on the left in the white shirt is Dr Mi Hee Lim, the scientist in charge of the study AAQI is funding. Debbie (AAQI treasurer) is next to Ami. The other folks gathered around are the researchers. I feel honored that my quilt was one of the ones they got to look at closely.
 
Read even more about the grant here. There are always quilts up for auction and quilts for sale on the AAQI site. All funds raised go to benefit Alzheimer's research so it's a win win situation when you buy a quilt. Happy hunting!