Recently on the SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) group list, a discussion came up about how one can make a bit of a living as an art quilter. I’ve received some positive comments about my post, so thought I’d tidy it up a bit, add an intro paragraph, and share it here. Hope this is interesting or helps some of you!

Perhaps the most useful think I have done is to join the QuiltArt list (www.quiltart.com). That is an on-line group of 2500+ souls around the world. Some are new to art but longtime quilters, some are experienced artists but new to sewing, some have super demanding day jobs and can only enjoy art quilting part time, and others of us are trying to make a go of it. By reading the list… and I will warn you the traffic is sometimes voluminous!… I have learned about art, about quilting, about the business side of things, entering shows, you name it. I told hubby that it was my on-line Master’s Degree in art quilting, and it really is.

And here’s what I wrote to the SAQA list:

I am faaaaarrrrrr from a known quantity, but here’s what I’ve done, and bit by bit it is working… seems as though I have (through sheer dumb luck) done much of what Pamelala (Pamela Allen, art quilter extraordinaire) has done…..

On the theory that I can’t sell my work if (a) I’m not known and (b) it is not seen, I have:

entered juried shows—can’t afford to do as many as Pamelala, but I look at geographic location when entering. Some like PIQF in Santa Clara I do again, others like Road2California I won’t (shipping there and back is more expensive than PIQF). Big name shows: if I can get in, I pay to ship no matter what (i.e. Houston, Paducah, and may even start thinking about UK and Japan…).

entered juried exhibits—both art and quilt venues, though mostly the latter, looking for geographic diversity!

participate on line–on QuiltArt, the Janome 6500/6600 list, a small group or two, I have actually gotten teaching jobs here in Maine through a referral from Florida–someone on the Janome list told a friend in Maine about me!

participate in travelling challenges that go to various venues–these have been through the QuiltArt list, but Annie Copeland’s exhibits were a great start, and currentliy Fabled Fibers

teach–as someone once told me, your students will like your work and some may buy it, and they are the word-of-mouth that is so valuable

have a website and keep it updated

have a blog and write regularly—this has been the biggest surprise. Google LOVES my blog! And it has brought me jobs, folks who like my work, etc. I’m migrating the blog to the website later this summer, which should help bring readers to the website and do even better with the search engines (and an additional note for my blog readers: I can’t believe how much fun I’ve had writing these “letters to you at the other end of the ether”…thanks!)

had local shows…at the bank. All I had to do was sign up for a month. Sent press release to the paper, which resulted in a page 1 of the B section full page article. Both led to great name recognition around town, which in turn led to…. This October at the new coffee house… just asked the owner, brought my work, she said yes! And ditto for the library… a gorgeous facility (small, we are after all a town of 5,700, but it draws paying members from neighboring towns because it is so good) where my mini-group (which was in Quilting Arts last winter) will have a show in August

walked into a local gallery, started chatting with staff, and then owner, who remembered my show at the bank–she agreed to try selling some of my work, said she didn’t know if it would sell but we could try. So we did and guess what…it works! I am a total unknown, she had never even SEEN an art quilt let alone know what it was called, but she liked it and was willing to give it a go (it’s a quirky gallery… prize winning carved and painted duck decoys, scrimshaw, as well as more traditional media)

Enter exhibits like the journal quilts… now Karey Bresenhan actually knows who I am, and has even bought my work… first a postcard I donated to FFAC (Virginia Spiegel’s cancer research fundraiser), then a major piece that got juried into the Viking “Imagine That” show (purchased for the IQF collection) and included two I Remember Mama quilts and journal quilts in her books. (And apart from that major ego boost, I have learned more than I can express by having been a part of he journal quilt process!)

Enter magazine contests and write article proposals: Quilting Arts! Made it to finalist one year in the calendar contest, and after many tries, have articles in the pipeline for later this year (still not saying much so as not to jinx things ) Working on the other mags

So as (One SAQA member) said, just keep doing it. It is a LOT of work. And I mean work. The playing with cloth and thread is fun. So is going to Festival. But it is also meeting the people that go with the names, making the connections, making yourself visible, and doing the (kinda yucky not fun) marketing stuff. The meeting people is fun, but the “selling yourself” is less pleasant, but if I don’t do it, no one will. So I just grit my teeth and do it, pleasantly, and sometimes I meet some totally cool people and it turns into fun.

Hope this helps?

Cheers, Sarah

website: https://www.sarahannsmith.com
blog: https://www.sarahannsmith.com/weblog/
and http://www.planet.textilethreads.com

Then I remembered to add the next day:

And your comment about one step at a time reminds me… My friend Kathy said to me a couple weeks ago “Did you have this all planned out? It seems like you’ve had this map in mind and set about achieving it” or something to that effect. My answer: heavens no! I have done one thing at a time, then another occurs to me, then maybe three or four (like I have another thing to pursue, but no time this year, so maybe by October?)…. so it’s one thing leads to another leads to another. And sometimes an opportunity pops up out of nowhere, and you just have to go with it, whether it is convenient or not.

Now, if I were still at my old day job, I’d have most nights and weekends to myself, and get paid about 10 times as much….. but I still wouldn’t go back (at least not while the kids are home…when they are off to college… maybe, for five years, just long enough to get a full pension…….)

As many of you may have noticed, my blog has changed appearance! That is because webmeisters extraordinares Gloria Hansen and Derry Thompson of Gloderworks.com have been doing an update to my site. I’m still working on my part of things, but on the blog side, I’d invite all of you to change your links to the new blog address:

www.sarahannsmith.com/weblog/

The Blogger address will continue to be valid, for a while at least, and will (thanks to Andrew, who works for G & D) automatically forward you to the new address.

Thanks to all of you who surf in regularly, from time to time or just once in a blue moon! I promise to get a “proper” blogpost up soon!

I wanted to thank everyone who has offered condolences.  I will miss my brother, but know that he is a lot more comfortable now than he probably has been in quite a long while.

Requiescat in Pace

Thomas Joseph Maleady II, born July 27, 1933, died June 17, 2007

This morning at 6:50 a.m. Pacific coast time, my half-brother, nicknamed Macho by his Mexican nannies (at the time Daddy was a US diplomat assigned to Mexico with his Cuban-Costa Rican wife, Emma) because of his dark skin and wavy hair, joined Daddy and Charlie, my other half-brother who died of cancer in 1982.

Macho died in Joyce’s arms, his wife of 40+ years…. I remember Joyce visiting when I was in first or second grade, and that was 42 years ago. He has been in “iffy” health for years, but the aneurism near his one barely-functioning kidney (which has been beyond ready-to-blow stage for at least a year) had begun to leak; he miraculously survived the emergency surgery last Saturday, but has been sliding downhill since Monday. We are blessed that he had good care, good doctors, has been on meds to alleviate pain and anxiety this past week, and a good wife to care for him.

Here is a picture of Daddy (on the left), Macho and Joyce in 1986 (not sure where the Lodge is!):

and here is my favorite picture of Daddy and the three of us, his kids… I’ve shared this before but here it is again: the one I like to think of as “three gangsters and a little girl”: Left to right it is Macho (known to friends and co-workers as Tom, TomJ, or just “T”), Daddy, and Charlie (Chuck to everyone outside of the family) and me, down in front in the middle:

I told Joyce when she called this morning with the news that I know what he’s doing…he’s up there telling jokes with Charlie and the three of them are laughing up a gale! I’ll miss the sound of his voice the most….

The Koi quilt is done (well…except for the sleeve and label, what else?!!!), the photos have been taken, then entry form for Houston filled out and mailed in. So now I get to share the quilt with my local guild chapter, my friends, and wait until August to see if they get into Houston. And in the meantime, they will travel to Augusta, Maine, for the annual Maine Quilts show in late July. All of the photos should be clickable to make them larger so you can see more detail.

When deciding on how to make the water, I looked at Pauline Burbidge‘s water quilts, thinking they were what I had in mind for the water, but it turned out not so. So I just went ahead and made what I did…then I realized that the pattern is very much a typical Japanese style design for water.

And here are some detail shots of the koi, the quilting and the beading. The beads represent the surface disruption / rippling caused by the movement of the fins and tails just beneath the surface.

I took the pictures before sewing on the hanging sleeve because I didn’t want the quilt view on the back marred by the sleeve. This is the reverse side…as if you were lying on the bottom of the pond looking up at the sky. You’ll notice that you are looking at the bellies of the koi, and the fractured sunlight streaming through the water, with the branches above visible through the water:

If I had a detail shot, (which I don’t) you could see that the top facing isn’t really a facing, but a narrow hanging sleeve that is the same width as the facings on the side and bottom. For quilt shows I will sew on the regulation 4″ hanging sleeve, but when it has done it’s quilt-show-journey, I will buy a metal slat, drill holes in the ends, and slide it into this top facing. That way, the quilt can be hung with either side out … or both… think room partition? Here’s one more (sideways…dontcha love blogger?) closeup of one of the koi on the reverse / back side:

I think I’d like to do another koi quilt (or two), not so large, maybe just one koi, but with overhanging branches, shadows from the branches on the water, and maybe raindrops forming circles/ripples on the water……

As for technique: I painted with a very thin wash of irridescent paint over my own hand-dyeds for the fish, which were quilted separately, then appliqued to the already-quilted surface of the pond (the ones on the back by machine, the ones on the front by hand). I pinned VERY carefully to get the fins and tails to line up on both sides of the fabric and quilted them in one pass. The background is fused, using my own hand-dyes and commercial batiks. The fins and tails are multiple layers of sheers (three different ones…a white, a cream and a pale gray for the white fins, and a totally tacky red floral for the orange-red, but which cuts up nicely!). I used Misty Fuse for all the fusing, including on the sheers.

Now, to crash on the sofa before heading to Saco, Maine, tomorrow where I will be doing a demo of machine quilting at the Art Quilts Maine exhibit at the Saco Museum. Hope to post pics on Monday or so…. Thanks for surfing back in to see the final result. Cheers, Sarah