SAQA Auction Starts Friday!

The annual Studio Art Quilts Association (SAQA) Benefit Auction starts this Friday, September 13. Over 400 12″ square quilts will be for sale over a three week period, including my Flying Saucer piece.

This Friday, all of the quilts will go on sale for $1000 each beginning at 2 PM. Then on Monday September 16, only the quilts in Section 1 will be available. It’s a reverse auction, so the price goes down each day starting at 2 PM. The first day the price is $750. At 2 pm the next day, the price drops to $550, Wednesday’s price is $350, Thursday’s is $250 and Friday’s is $100. It’s always a balancing act to try and get the piece you want at the price you want to pay. Be careful not to wait too long, or someone else will snap it up!

The quilts in Section 2 will be available for sale beginning on September 23, and the quilts in the final section will go on sale on September 30.

Flying Saucer is in Section 1.

I’m proud to have contributed to the auction for at least nine years. Each year I donate a piece and purchase at least one. The proceeds go to help SAQA promote quilts as art to the world with exhibitions, catalogs, and outreach programs.

This piece is a bit different from my usual way of working. Earlier this year I was creating a series of small black and white studies to come up with some new lines and shapes to explore. This was one of my favorites, so I decided to do it again in color for the auction.

I had fun stitching the texture into the finished piece–a motif I call blocks and spirals in the pink and purple areas and square spirals in the gold section. For the background, I had intended to stitch straight lines, but as sometimes happens, the quilt had other ideas. Echoing the outlines of the shapes created some secondary patterns that I think add some extra energy and interest to the final composition.

The auction is a lot of fun and I hope you’ll take a look at all the wonderful pieces that are available this year. I have my eye on a couple already!