Liberated Quilting Challenge: May 2012

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

What is the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative Monthly Auction?

When I tell friends or family that I have an art quilt up at auction for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, they always ask me "What does that exactly mean?"

And that's actually a very good question!

It doesn't necessarily mean that AAQI founder Ami Simms will take my small format art quilt and hold it up in front of a large crowd of eager buyers...but she might do that in real life and in person if she was at the Houston International Art Quilt Festival each November....where between 1,000 and 1,500 of our AAQI art quilts are shown and sold each year!

But what it usually means when we say "AAQI Monthly Auction" is that it must be that special time of each and every month where 26 quilts are selected by Ami Simms to appear at the AAQI online auction site, hosted by BenefitBidding.com.

From the 1st to the 10th of each and every month, you can go online to this site and bid on your favorite quilt or quilts!

It is a knuckle rapping, nail biting time when you wonder if you will get it with a final high placing bid or lose it because you forgot to check back often enough or even at the last minute for someone else to beat you at your own game! The secret of avoiding that is to sign up for a new features called:

Auto Bid & Popcorn Bidding

Signing up for this allows you a more successful chance of getting that final bidding opportunity and ending up with the beautiful quilts of your choice! Imagine the possibilities of both making wonderful contributions AND helping fund Alzheimer's research!!

This month's auction features some unusual and beautiful small format quilts which will be up for auction on June 1 through June 10th...2012.

Please note that the bidding on these monthly auction items starts at: 05/31/12 22:00:59 CT

I feel very fortunate to have another of my own small format art quilts up for bidding in the June Auction.

Quilt #9648 - Changing the World
Michele Bilyeu
Salem OR/Douglas AK

Please note the photo used above was taken by me with my own camera, the photo on the auction site was scanned by AAQI, hence the color differential as well as the pressure from the scanner lid on my beautiful African painted beads! It is my favorite quilt as far as the colors go so I wanted to showcase it better and only wished I'd taken a better photo myself before I mailed it in! Trust me it is gorgeous ..even if I say so myself! I love this quilt and am so happy it is up for auction for such a wonderful, wonderful cause!

And Liberated Challenge Group member, Sue Ryan (who is now also a member of the Chicago Quilt Guild Group) also has a great quilt up at auction this month:

Quilt #9726 - Rough Around the Edges
Sue Ryan
Chicago, IL

Bidding on these items starts at: 05/31/12 22:00:59

Please do consider joining Liberated Quilting Challenge (info here on this blog) as many of our members have now had quilts up for auction, sent on traveling sales display, or featured on AAQI's facebook page! It's a win-win both for the quilter and this group! You are all so wonderful, as are your AAQI Liberated Quilting Challenge Group quilts!

By Michele BilyeuMichele Bilyeu Quilts With Heart and Hands for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) Join in my Liberated Quilting Challenge...and buy or donate a quilt, today!! We are changing the world...one little quilt at a time.

By Michele Bilyeu

Michele Bilyeu Quilts With Heart and Hands for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) Join in my Liberated Quilting Challenge...and buy or donate a quilt, today!! We are changing the world...one little quilt at a time.

What is the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Monthly Auction?

When I tell friends or family that I have an art quilt up at auction for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, they always ask me "What does that exactly mean?"

And that's actually a very good question!

It doesn't necessarily mean that AAQI founder Ami Simms will take my small format art quilt and hold it up in front of a large crowd of eager buyers...but she might do that in real life and in person if she was at the Houston International Art Quilt Festival each November....where between 1,000 and 1,500 of our AAQI art quilts are shown and sold each year

In Houston, they are not only displayed beautifully on special walls with all of their quilt information beside them, but also sold on the spot to eager buyers who not only want to own a lovely small format art quilt by some very talented art quilters, but also have their purchase funds support Alzheimer's research funding as all of the profits from the sale of these quilts do!

But what it usually means when we say "AAQI Monthly Auction" is that it must be the special time of each and every month where 26 quilts are selected by Ami Simms to appear at the AAQI online auction site, hosted by BenefitBidding.com. From the 1st to the 10th of each and every month, you can go online to this site and bid on your favorite quilt or quilts.

It is a knuckle rapping, nail biting time when you wonder if you will get it with a final high placing bid or lose it because you forgot to check back often enough or even at the last minute for someone else to beat you at your own game! The secret of avoiding that is to sign up for a new features called:

Auto Bid & Popcorn Bidding

Signing up for this allows you a more successful chance of getting that final bidding opportunity and ending up with the beautiful quilts of your choice! Imagine the possibilities of both making wonderful contributions AND helping fund Alzheimer's research!!

This month's auction features some unusual and beautiful small format quilts which will be up for auction on June 1 through June 10th...2012.

I feel very fortunate to have another of my own small format art quilts up for bidding in the June Auction.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Zombie Brains: A Dream Within A Dream

Ami Simms, founder of the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) has added a new feature to the AAQI line-up of Quilts For Sale.

Called Sales on the Road, it is an experimental project in which all of the quilts that you see on this page will be offered for sale at the May 22 meeting of the River Country Quilters Guild.

If this additional sales idea proves successful, AAQI will invite other individuals or groups to take limited numbers of quilts for sale at other specific times and places.

Please do note, that these quilts are not meant to be purchased online as they are being set aside for this special sale. But do take a look at all of them, and if you are a member of the River Country Quilters Guild...or if you come in as a visitor or a guest....I truly hope you will consider a purchase of one of these great little quilts...see all of them on this AAQI Sales on the Road page ...but especially of these two quilts from our own Liberated Quilting Challenge!!!

I love BOTH of our quilts and while they are SO very different, they still have SO VERY MUCH IN COMMON! They would be fabulous displayed on your own art quilt wall at home!

So, please consider purchasing BOTH Jude and my quilts :) What an awesome contribution this duo would make towards funding Alzheimer's research! Remember, the profits from the sale of all AAQI quilts go to fund our cause.

Zombie Brains and A Dream With A Dream

When I think about it, isn't that pretty much how we feel on the days when our own minds are frazzled and disconnected? We are in such a crazy place where not only our mental abilities collide.... but so do our abilities to tell what is real, and what isn't. But what about the person with Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer's Disease is very, very real. It's victims live in a shattered world of illusions, and altered realities. Memories become either hazy and dreamlike..often even beautiful or places we have never been, things we never really did... or overly exaggerated and anything but beautiful... with hallucinations and false memories of things that may, or may not, have even happened.

Both Jude and my quilts will be for sale at the May 22 meeting of the River Country Quilters Guild. Please buy both of our quilts and help us make a difference in the reality of the 5.4 million victims of Alzheimer's Disease by continued Alzheimer's research funding.

8669 Zombie Brains

Jude Edling
Blue Earth, Minnesota USA

Width: 9" Length: 11"

Materials/Techniques: Batik, novelty fabric, fusible and glow in the dark thread.

Artist Statement: This is the third in my Brain series. It glows in the dark.

9400 A Dream With A Dream

Michele Bilyeu
Salem, OR USA

Width: 8.75" Length: 11.5"

Materials/Techniques: Designer cottons and batiks with applique, ink jet printing, Shiva oil sticks, metallic threads in free motion quilting, and golden beads.

Artist Statement: Edgar Allen Poe once wrote, "All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream." I wanted to create a deep, but still magical little quilt that brought the viewer into that dream...but allowed them to still see the golden nuggets of hope within.

Dedication: For my mother, who married my father 62 years ago, to share his life, his dreams, and his search for a golden future together. Alzheimer's might have changed those dreams, but it didn't completely destroy them. She dreams of him, and loves him, still.

Leave comments on my primary blog's post:
Zombie Brains: A Dream Within A Dream

Michele Bilyeu Quilts With Heart and Hands for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) Join in my Liberated Quilting Challenge...and buy or donate a quilt, today!! We are changing the world...one little quilt at a time.

Monday, May 14, 2012

What is AAQI?

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked "What is AAQI?" I'd be able to buy one heck of a lot of fabric in order to make, and to donate even more quilts to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI)

And to be able to do that, would be a wonderful thing, for the Ami Simms and the volunteer members of the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) do amazing work.....one little quilt at a time...creating small format art quilts whose sales profits go towards Alzheimer's research funding.

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) was founded by Ami Simms, a wonderful quilter, quilt teacher, and more importantly, a loving daughter and care giver of her own mother who had been battling Alzheimer's Disease.

In 2006, her idea of using quilts and quilters was put into action with the creation of "The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative" (www.AlzQuilts.org), an organization, a multi-tiered website, and a lot of amazing and wonderful volunteers staffing it and creating quilts every step of the way. As a national, grassroots charity it's mission is to raise awareness and fund research for Alzheimer's Disease. And since January of 2006, we have auctioned off or directly sold moe than 10,000 of these beautiful little quilts and sponsored two nationally touring exhibit of quilts about Alzheimer's. The AAQI has now raised more than $713,000 since January 2006! And that money has not only raised awareness but funded some amazing research at a number of wonderful research organizations.

The AAQI, itself, currently sponsors two major programs:

Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts
The first is the Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts" project, so named for the urgent need for research dollars and the hope that quilters across the country would make participation in this project a priority. Generous quilters create small format quilts (9" x 12"or smaller) which can fit inside flat rate cardboard priority mailers from the USPS.

Alzheimer's Illustrated: From Heartbreak to Hope
The second is a nationwide traveling quilt exhibit called "Alzheimer's Illustrated: From Heartbreak to Hope." It features 182 "Name Quilts" six inches wide and seven feet tall, containing the names of more than 10,000 individuals who have or had Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia. Hanging among the Name Quilts are 53 small format art quilts (9" x 12") that each interpret Alzheimer's in some way. The exhibit will tour the United States for 5 years.

In addition to these two primary programs there are even more ways that an individual or a group can help us raise both awareness and money for research funding.

Check out 33 Ways You Can Help

AAQI Quilts For Sale

AAQI Monthly Auction which lists 26 selected quilts for sale at auction from the first to tenth of each month.

Donate money

Buy earrings, tshirts, mugs, bags and other AAQI logo apparel etc.

Individually, each of us who quilts and donates our small format quilts for AAQI, continue to do our own additional work to spread the word about the organization, encourage others to make or buy our quilts.

In addition, some of us have formed groups such as the one that I started January 1, 2012. My group the Liberated Quilting Challenge began when I realized I wanted to do even more than I was already doing. At that point I was traveling back and forth from my current home in Salem, Oregon to my childhood home on Douglas Island near Juneau, Alaska, to care for my own mother who was battling Alzheimer's Disease.

After five years of the progression of her disease, and a combined total of 3 years of care giving, I knew it was only going to get harder, more challenging, and even more frightening to watch the horrible deterioration and unbelievable mental and physical loss of control in my mother. I also realized by then, that my own family had 13 members with direct DNA and two by marriage..one grandpa, both parents, and multiple aunts, and uncles..with this terrible disease or a related dementia. And I knew that based on current statistics there was a very good chance that the same might happen to me.

I contacted online bloggers who were also quilters and asked them to join in and make a difference in the lives of so many others. It was heartwarming to see the response I got as the quilts began to be created and donated.

And while we are still a relatively small group..the equivalent of a very, very small quilt guild...we have donated literally hundreds of quilts to AAQI. I, myself, have now created and donated 40 quilts ...some of them still for sale, and two of them on tour with the traveling exhibit.... all the while still traveling back and forth to Alaska, caring for my parents without outside help in their home, and blogging about my experiences.

It is challenging, but the more you do, the more you want to do. And the corollary for me, the more I give..the more I wish I could give. It is a deep, deep feeling of truly making a difference, in my own small way..one little quilt at a time.

Please consider the purchase of one our group member's quilts!

Michele Bilyeu Quilts With Heart and Hands for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) Join in my Liberated Quilting Challenge...and buy or donate a quilt, today!! We are changing the world...one little quilt at a time.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

AAQI: Are You This Person?

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative turns quilts into dollars for Alzheimer's research. The person sharing this image has made that possible.

Please support their efforts by purchasing a quilt at http://www.alzquilts.org/quiltsforsale.html.

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To get the graphic on this page to appear by your picture on Facebook, copy the link below and paste it into your status update. Scroll through the thumbnail choices until the graphic appears. Select it. Then post.

http://www.AAQI.org/share.html

Michele Bilyeu
I volunteer for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative and I am so proud to be able to do so! Support AAQI by buying or donating a small format art quilt, today! All profits go towards Alzheimer's research and it's all I can do to do what I do now...I don't want to imagine me later!

Why I Donate to AAQI