Beth Abbott on Quilting Show

Beth Abbott on Quilting Show

Quilting Show

Beth Abbott talks about being a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates and getting accepted in a quilting show.

Shaelagh Cull

Beth Abbott

Malting Tower at the Tett Centre

I always liked the challenge of having a theme and then producing something for the theme. So even in the quilting, I got accepted. I'm a member of the Studio Art Quilt Associates. And that's an international group largely based in the US. And they had a theme that came out and it was called Metaphors on Aging. And my dad had just passed away. And during the time that I was looking after him, I had night duty and I was trying to keep awake, I was doing some, it's a type of drawing, Zentangle. It was a type of line drawing. And I had made a landscape with a balloon, hot air balloon. And as I was doing it, I was thinking that's kind of like dad, his spirits kind of drifting away from us. So when this theme came out, I thought I know exactly what I'm going to do. So I translated that little sketch into a quilt. And I was accepted into the show, and it opened in Birmingham, England, and then it went to South Africa to Johannesburg to a big quilt show there. And then it went to the states and my sister and I went to Chicago to the quilt show and saw it hanging in the show. And these are quilt shows with 1000s of quilts and 1000s of people that come. And the Studio Art Quilts Associates have a small portion of that show. So that was kind of exciting to see it in the flesh sort of thing.