In January of 2002, Karey Bresenhan, President and CEO of Quilts, Inc. and Director of the International Quilt Festival, posted a query to the Quilt Art list. Would people be interested in creating a series of journal quilts to be displayed in Houston? The response was overwhelming, and just shy of 250 quilt artists responded before the cutoff date.

From the guidelines: A Page from My Book: Journal Quilts 2002

Photo from the Houston Show

The Journal Quilt Project has been organized by the International Quilt Festival in Houston as a free-form exercise in creativity, specifically planned to encourage quilt artists to stretch and grow by trying new methods; by experimenting with color, image, composition, materials, and/or technique; by keeping an informal journal to record the influences on their experimental work and their own reactions to this work; and by showing the further influence of time on an artist's creative development and personal progress. The Journal Quilt Project is not a contest or competition.

My own QuiltPages are a combination of emotions and experiences, along with experimentation of new methods and techniques. In the first five months alone, I have played with three new applique techniques, free-motion machine quilting, free-motion machine embroidery, stamping, foiling, and photo transfer, and new materials such as tulle and organza and a variety of stabilizers. Each has been an original design.

The following pages, while not showing the final QuiltPages, do show some elements from the finished pieces, or works in progress, along with journal entries describing both the mood and the techniques used. After the exhibit, the finished QuiltPages will be posted. Enjoy!

Month Links Working Now: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August & September

Please Note:
All images on this site are the property of Mary McRae. Feel free to bookmark this site to view these pieces as often as you'd like, but please don't download or copy the images. Thanks for understanding!