When the American Quilter’s Society AQS Quilt Exposition opens Aug. 25-27 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tenn., quilts made by eight Art Quilts Maine members will be among the 18 guild semifinalists in the Ultimate Guild Challenge contest at the exposition. The competition offers $5,000 for first place.

Leigh Griffin of Houlton, Sally Rowe of Farmington, Kate Cutko of Bowdoinham, Virginia Morel of Farmington, Jeanne-Marie Robinson of Northport, Penny Ackley of Monmouth, Julie Weaver of Mt. Vernon and Stacie Mann of Lee, all members of Art Quilts Maine, each have a quilt in the challenge. The eight quilts will be judged as a group, said Stacie Mann.

Mann also is a semifinalist in the landscapes category of the quilt exposition with her 90-by-81-inch quilt “Deciduous.” Mann’s quilt was chosen from 454 quilt entries and will be in contention with 281 other quilts.

“I’m entirely self-taught,” Mann said. “I’m not influenced by anyone. I’ve never taken a quilting class and haven’t been taught anyone else’s style. I never learned the rules.” She has been a quilter for 15 years, 10 as a hobbyist, and five as a professional. She also is a self-taught weaver. “If I want to know how to do something, I read a book about it and figure it out,” she said.

Mann, a native of Illinois, is a graduate of the University of Maine, where she studied English and history. Later, as a military wife, she lived in many other parts of the United States. “Maine was the only place I ever wanted to go back to,” she said. “In Maine, rural people live the quilting ethic – take a little of this, a little of that, and make what you want or need.”

Mann became a quilter because “my fiance had this ugly blanket on his bed, so I decided to make him a pretty quilt to replace it. I knew nothing about quilting and knew no one who quilted. All I had for tools was a pencil, a ruler and a pair of kitchen scissors.”

From that spontaneous beginning, Mann progressed to the point where she now combines weaving and quilting, hand dyes and paints the fabric she uses in her quilts, and blends hand quilting with machine quilting. She assembles her quilts with zig-zag stitched seams which she covers by couching over the seams with multiple strands of yarn. Couching is the process of laying a strand or strands of fiber in a line on fabric and securing it with hand stitches perpendicular to it. These techniques, she said, give her work a textural, complex visual effect.

Mann thinks of herself more as a fiber artist than as a quilter and her goal is to “continue to develop her hybrid technique of quilting and weaving. She also wants to find gallery representation outside of Maine and offer her work for sale in international, as well as national, fiber art markets.

Mann said that one of her secrets to success is “if you make a mistake, repeat it. It will look like you did it on purpose. That’s how I came up with many of my patterns.”

She suggests that beginning quilters do what they like best. “Don’t be afraid be afraid of rejection or criticism when entering a quilt contest,” she said.

Snippets

To read a story about Bosnian Handicrafts, visit htttp://csmonitor.com/2005/0727/p15s01-lign.html.

Ardeana Hamlin may be reached at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.