News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show has evolved from one day of colorful madness on the second Saturday in July to a week-long celebration of folk art.
The internationally renowned event kicks off this weekend with the Around the Block Fiber Arts Stroll, Saturday, July 5, from 4 to 7:30 p.m.
More than 30 artists and merchants are participating in this fifth annual event. Artists will be on display, demonstrating and selling their fiber art work in business throughout Sisters.
Fiber art includes pine needle basketry, quilts on display, printmaking, weaving, spinning, fish printing and puppetry.
This year, the art stroll will feature a significant number of quilts.
A group of 15 panels will be on display in the Machine Quilters Showcase and the work of featured quilter Robin Ryan will be displayed behind The Hen's Tooth.
Quilts with a literary flavor, dubbed Cover-to-Cover Quilts, will be on display at Sisters Library.
"There's some great quilts from the Harry Potter series," said quilt show executive director Ann Richardson.
The idea behind the emphasis on quilts at this year's art stroll is, according to Richardson, to create a "mini-quilt show, providing people the opportunity to get a taste of the Quilt Show if they're unable to come to the Quilt Show (on July 12)."
One of the major features of the show this year is The Quilts of El Shaddai - a display and sale of quilts made by boys from the El Shaddai Orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda.
Quilts will be on display inside Sisters Coffee Co. and there will be a presentation of "The Story of El Shaddai" at Sisters Coffee on Sunday, July 6.
Richard said the display came as a bit of serendipity. She ran into two quilters who had launched the project in Rwanda to help the economically distressed African nation. The women were therapists who had been working with children in orphanages suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the wake of genocidal violence that ravaged the country in the 1990s.
The orphans were in need of a trade that could support them, Richardson said, and the therapists "taught the boys to quilt and now they've brought the quilts back and are selling them."
Richardson noted that quilting is an exclusively male endeavor in the Rwandan orphanages.
"They won't teach the girls," she said. "It's just the boys because it's the boys that have to set themselves up in a trade."
Struck by the story, Richardson invited the women to sell the quilts at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.
There are currently 18 quilts available for purchase.
Closer to home, the quilt show is sponsoring another fund-raiser: Wish Upon a Card - a display and sale of fabric postcards to raise money for Wendy's Wish Foundation, a local charity aiding in the fight against cancer.
Juried and custom-framed cards will be on display in Sisters Art Works, 204 W. Adams Ave., during the art stroll.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
Reader Comments(0)