Lovely photos, and nice to see a peek into another guild (I'm with the Victoria MQG). Question though for you, and I'm not being bitchy, but what do you do about the um, less modern quilts people show?
We've been getting a wee bit of flak from members when other people show the less modern quilts. I find it a hard line to walk between accepting of all quilts but holding the modern line.
Hi Nicole! All members and all types of quilts are welcome at our meetings. We've experimented in the past with having people tell us "What makes your quilt modern" while they're showing off their quilt, but that didn't seem to work so well ("I don't know" and "I guess it's not modern" were the prevailing answers a lot of the time). I think re-visiting that idea in the future might be fun but we'd first need to open up a dialogue and give our guild members a vocabulary to work with...and maybe expand the conversation to "is it modern?" and maybe "Where do you fall as a quilter on the modern to traditional spectrum? What qualities do you like of modern quilting? Of traditional quilting?" I feel like sometimes the definition of Modern can feel limiting and we don't want to force a specific definition on anybody since the definition is changing as people take the movement and make it work for them. --Mary Ann, PMQG President
Oh, and as for members that may not like that...as long as you have plenty of time for show and tell, then for us there is no reason to limit it. If someone complains I generally would tell them how much nicer it is to be inclusive. Maybe the traditional quilt that is being shown is actually pretty daringly modern for that person compared to how they normally quilt, or maybe it was a super big step for them to even get up in front of a group and share their work. I generally shut down the complainers pretty quickly, we don't need that judge-y energy (but I'm happy to say that we haven't had any of that that I can think of this year, and very little last year!) --Mary Ann
Lovely photos, and nice to see a peek into another guild (I'm with the Victoria MQG). Question though for you, and I'm not being bitchy, but what do you do about the um, less modern quilts people show?
ReplyDeleteWe've been getting a wee bit of flak from members when other people show the less modern quilts. I find it a hard line to walk between accepting of all quilts but holding the modern line.
Hi Nicole! All members and all types of quilts are welcome at our meetings. We've experimented in the past with having people tell us "What makes your quilt modern" while they're showing off their quilt, but that didn't seem to work so well ("I don't know" and "I guess it's not modern" were the prevailing answers a lot of the time). I think re-visiting that idea in the future might be fun but we'd first need to open up a dialogue and give our guild members a vocabulary to work with...and maybe expand the conversation to "is it modern?" and maybe "Where do you fall as a quilter on the modern to traditional spectrum? What qualities do you like of modern quilting? Of traditional quilting?" I feel like sometimes the definition of Modern can feel limiting and we don't want to force a specific definition on anybody since the definition is changing as people take the movement and make it work for them.
ReplyDelete--Mary Ann, PMQG President
Oh, and as for members that may not like that...as long as you have plenty of time for show and tell, then for us there is no reason to limit it. If someone complains I generally would tell them how much nicer it is to be inclusive. Maybe the traditional quilt that is being shown is actually pretty daringly modern for that person compared to how they normally quilt, or maybe it was a super big step for them to even get up in front of a group and share their work. I generally shut down the complainers pretty quickly, we don't need that judge-y energy (but I'm happy to say that we haven't had any of that that I can think of this year, and very little last year!)
ReplyDelete--Mary Ann