Quilt to the hilt

Silver Springs will soon be kept in stitches as the area's best quilters bring out both their traditional and abstract quilt designs.

Show entries and vendor registration must be in by Tuesday for the Silver Springs Entertainment and Arts' 2005 Fiber Arts/Quilt Show, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 1 at Silver Springs Elementary School, and judged by internationally known quilt artist and designer Robert Callaham.

Quilter Chris Hansen of Silver Springs said she does about 10 projects a year, most being smaller wall hangings and other items.

"It can take months," she said. "I'm working on a quilt that I have been working on for two years - not that I work on it every day."

Sometimes Hansen said she needs to acquire new skills just to finish a quilt.

"As I progress, I have found that I need more skills than I have to complete my vision for this quilt," she said.

So she stopped to learn things like photo transfer, lettering, more fabric manipulation.

"Just new ways to create a visual to express what I'm trying to say," she said.

Hansen's works are a far cry from the old-fashioned patchwork quilt you found on the bed when you went to stay at Grandma's house.

"Although I really love and appreciate the traditional quilts, the one I have been working on is part traditional and part art," she said. "I do more of the art quilts."

Hansen said one quilt she plans to enter has particular significance this time of year.

"It's called '9/10 The Way We Were' and I tried to express just how safe and silly we were before 9/11," she said.

She said though the quilt had some traditional techniques, it was an abstract concept.

"I had a vision that I wanted it to look like a dream, so I had to create a visual energy to make it look deep and dreamlike," she said.

Hansen said she's always working on several quilts.

"Well, I just got my kids raised, and I've been a stay-at-home mom and I have a husband who's very supportive," she said. "I'm in that studio every day, seven days a week."

She said she hasn't sold quilts yet, but is open to the idea.

"I wouldn't mind selling them," she said. "I have some at the Wildflower Village Art Gallery in Reno and I have had artists trade their things for a quilt."

Quilter Bobbi Minor, also of Silver Springs, will present three of the more traditional quilt varieties and describes them in true quilter's lingo.

"I have a thumb-in-hand quilt, a grandmother flower garden basket, that's a hexagon," she said. "And I have a Dresden plate where the colors are rust and brown and the plates are all different."

Minor said she also had a quilt she made from a dress her mother had.

"It's a paisley print in turquoise, pink and lime green," she said. "I made that from the Flying Goose pattern and I made the blocks and 11-inch border in pink and lined it with white."

She has won first, second and third prizes in various categories in the past, but has never won what she's shooting for this year - best in show.

Minor said quilters from all over the region enter the show.

Callaham will offer a demonstration in appliqué, and there will be other demonstrations of flower pounding, strip cutting machines and kids' classes in handprints.

If you go

What: 2005 Fiber Arts/Quilt Show

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 1

Where: Silver Springs Elementary School, 3900 Spruce Ave., Silver Springs

Entry & vendor deadline: Tuesday

Entries: Call Emma Sylvester at (775) 577-2588 or e-mail her at Hub22811@aol.com.

Vendors: Call Chris Hansen at (775) 577-2207 or e-mail her at chris@salsafabrics.com

- Contact reporter Karen Woodmansee at kwoodmansee@nevadaappeal.com or 882-2111 ext. 351.