New, old quilting styled at show

When the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show stopped at the Bloomington Convention Center during the weekend, it brought the newest technology in the traditional past time.

The Indiana Heritage Quilt Show is an annual convention that allows quilters from across the country to convene to showcase their quilts and compete for prizes in 18 categories.

While the first floor of the convention center featured many workshops that ranged from “Thread Painting Landscapes” to “Shading and Blending with Thread,” the main attraction was upstairs: a display of hundreds of quilts and almost as many vendors.
 
The Statler Stitcher, a leader in computerized quilting, played a part in many of the more than 200 entries. 

Julie Bradley and Bekki Lund traveled to the convention from Stevenville, Mich. Both women work for Accomplish Quilting, Inc., a sponsor of the show and the creator of the “Exemplary Machine Quilting” award.

“Computerized quilting is becoming much more popular,” Lund said. “People like the accuracy. Patterns come as computer files that you can download off the Internet.”

Lund said computer-guided quilting allows beginners to produce high-quality quilts in less time.

“These machines change the learning curve drastically,” Bradley said.

While Accomplish Quilting’s stand at the show featured three Statler Stitchers that allowed attendees to try their own patterns in a quilt, other vendors were more traditional, with quilts lining the walls of their booths.

Back Door Quilts from Greenwood, Ind., displayed quilts from multiple artists. While some of the quilts were hand-stitched, most were stitched using a computer.

“We have a full-time quilter that stitches our designs,” owner Teri Dougherty said. “For vendors, computerizing is a matter of saving time.”

Brian Haggard, who sells many of his quilts through Back Door Quilts, attended the convention to publicize his work and his newest book, “Crazy-Quilted Memories.” The book contains instructions about how to incorporate photographs into a quilt and includes examples of designs.

Haggard, whose 27 years in interior design inspired his love of quilting, said all of his quilts are stitched by hand, excluding the photographs he has embroidered into
certain patches.

While Haggard currently makes his living through interior design, he said he hopes to eventually make a career out of quilting. If he is successful, he said, he plans to travel to Ireland to teach quilting classes. 

“Computerized- and hand-stitching are two totally different camps,” Haggard said. “Computer-guided stitching only allows customizing in terms of the color of the thread. For me, quilting is about doing something that’s never the same, something where there is no repetitiveness.”