"ROAD 2 VIRGINIA," 2026 (Cheri)

6/29/2026

Last week Mark and I went to Virginia with our friends Mike and Paula Jones, to see the Road 2 Virginia regional quilt show, and visit Artistic Artifacts in Arlington, VA.

"Himalayan Poppies II," by Nelda McComb

Art, lots of laughs, and great food! (I forgot to take pictures at Artistic Artifacts, but recommend it if you find yourself near, say at the Smithsonians?)

The picture above doesn't do justice to the quilt itself. The orange stamens and the black and white dotted lines were equally compelling, creating something of an interest triad with the papery-but-intense blue flower petals.

If you like cherry blossoms, it's worth expanding this picture. The design and execution are both exquisite!

Many of my favorite quilts in this show were in a traveling exhibit entitled "Wind," by members of the Studio Art Quilt Associates.

This quilt glows, as it is made of a soft polyester fabric, which is an atypical choice. Thinking about that, I decided it makes the image more alarming, as a glow behind dark skies is also unusual, and not a good sign.

This artist took the theme "wind" in an entirely different, charming, direction, though she had a serious accompanying message.

I usually try to size quilt images here so that they can be seen entirely within a single laptop screen, but decided to leave this one larger, so that the details are more distinct.

I love visual and tactile textures, so the quilt pulled me in, but my first thought was "What connection to wind?" Well, if you think of this as the inside of a tornado, it could be an extremely accurate representation.

Sacred Threads is a biannual show which provided another grouping of quilts for the Road 2 Virginia show. For at the least the last Sacred Threads show, the themes were "Expressions of Joy, Spirituality, Inspiration, Grief, Healing and Peace/Brotherhood."

The rest of the quilts here are from that exhibit. You can see more of the quilts from that exhibit, and hear audio comments at this link.