IIDA NY + Free Arts NYC Joined Forces at 10th Annual Sustainable Quilt Auction
Last week, members of New York City’s interior design community gathered to celebrate art and design, while empowering the community’s youth at the IIDA NY’s 10th Annual Sustainable Quilt Auction, where proceeds benefited Free Arts NYC.
IIDA NY’s chapter raised money for the local organization that empowers underserved youth through art and mentorship programs to develop their creativity, confidence, and skills to succeed. Held at the Steelcase Showroom in Columbus Circle, creators from TPG Architecture, Perkins+Will, Gensler, and IA Interior Architects amongst others, exhibited one-of-a-kind quilts aligning with this year’s theme of “Connection.”
The teams quilted for more than 1,200 hours combined, producing quilts that used new techniques and technologies not seen in previous years. For example, Perkins+Will’s “Water Quilt” was based on the tessellation origami technique, in which a single sheet of 2D paper is folded into 3D shapes. Two quilts, “It’s Not France” designed by LMNOP and “Circuitree of Life” designed by IA Interior Architects, Ultrafabrics, and KI Interiors, incorporated lighting into the fabrics’ structure.
IIDA NY’s 2018 Sustainable Quilt Auction
Quilt Descriptions
Quilt Title: Build Stairs, Not Walls
Hours: 315 Hours
Team TPG: Mariana Giraldo, Jacquelyn Haas, Geethika Jakkala, Lisbeth Jimenez, Katie Kanakos, Eileen Ley, Dervela O’Brien
In response to this year’s theme, we took an architectural approach and incorporated stairs into our quilt pattern. Many of our firm’s workplace designs feature interconnecting staircases, so it’s no surprise we were influenced by our own work experience. We took this design element in a literal sense and discussed how stairs do more than functionally connect floors, but also connect people, build relationships, and create places. Our quilting team, made up of many first-time sewers, was also inspired by the work of architect, Ricardo Legorreta. His work combines modern architectural elements with traditional Mexican aesthetics such as bright colors and artisanal textures. Our design interpretation evolved into an optical illusion of parallel staircases that would allow the quilt to be viewed or hung in any direction. During one of our first team quilting bees (after sorting through 100 shades of purple, with a bottle of prosecco) our team named our connective quilt—“Build Stairs, Not Walls.”
Quilt Title: Water Quilt
Hours: 100+
Team Perkins+Will: Aiko Tanabe, Brooke Horan, Xie Xin, Kela Bogaard, Helen Gorina, Jordan Hansen, Carolyn BaRoss, and John Sadlon
The quilt represents the data of renewable internal freshwater resources (river & ground water) cubic meters per capita, with the full fields of blues being 1977, and the solid blue field representing the 2025 projection. Some of the causes of this growing depletion are world population increase and improved access to the freshwater, however, more so by the industrialization of agriculture and the pollution caused by other industrial exploitations of natural resources (eg. fracking). The climate change is exasperating the situation in some areas of the world such as South Africa, where in recent months a large city like Cape Town has been facing “day-zero.” In other areas of the world, access to freshwater is starting to cause skirmishes between regions as people are starting to call it “Blue Gold.” The P+W quilt team hopes to raise awareness by visualizing the disintegration of “Blue Gold” into gold which is essentially useless. The geographical shape is based on tessellation origami technique, in which a single sheet of 2D paper is folded into 3D shapes.
Quilt Title: Defying Gravity
Hours: Just enough
Team Ladynauts: Andre Pause, Taylor Holland, Anne Drysdale, Erin McDaniel, Alex Koretski, and Daniel Chilcote
Building on several years of Pop Iconography based in American portraiture, the Ladynauts (comprised of designers from Davis Brady Bond, FX Collaborative, Herman Miller, Perkins+Will, and Spacesmith) looked to the future and the awe-inspiring prospect of colonizing Mars. The quilt itself is constructed using 580 trapezoids to represent space and Mars with an astronaut and several unidentified objects appliquéed onto the background. The exact circumstances of the scene and meaning of the objects is left intentionally to the imagination.
Quilt Title: Voyager 1
Hours: 40
Team C3 Design: Cyndi and Daniel Tillman
With this year’s theme being “connections”, we decided that the map of our location in the universe, that is on Voyager 1, was hard to pass up. It has just passed its 40th anniversary and is currently heading away from us, in the interstellar space. Connecting with the universe seemed like fun.
Quilt Title: Circuitree of Life
Hours: 150
Team Resistance is Futile: Katie Buhl, Christian Pettineo, Candice Yang, Nicole Smith, Shauna Corcoran, Sylvia Dejoie, Niki Sokoloski, and Sarah Stepahin.
This year IA, Ultrafabrics, and KI teamed up to collaborate on a quilt that was inspired by the traditional tree of life quilt block with a technological twist. It’s sometimes easy to forget with how far we’ve come in technological advancements that electricity was discovered, not manufactured. This quilt literally illuminates the connection between nature, technology, and art. Connecting where we’ve been and our momentum into the future.
Quilt Title: Color Story
Hours: 160
Team IIDA NY: Abigail French, Katie Michael-Battaglia, and Alison Wittenmyer
Inspired by a family heirloom — a beautiful tray brought back from Brazil and passed on through family generations — this tray is a collage of actual butterflies and wings layered upon each other and laminated with glass. It has a mesmerizing iridescent quality that changes with all movement. Layers of blues, purples and golds make up the color pallette. The tray of butterflies has now metamorphosed into a quilt to be passed onto future generations.
Quilt Title: It’s Not France
Hours: Don’t ask!
Team LMNOP: Janet Salzer, Andrew Fuston, Saffron Chung, Vanessa Weber, Ann Issackedes, and Lisa Sayre
A vintage red bicycle propped up against a romantic stone wall, a cobble-stoned path heading towards unknown adventures, this european streetscape is the perfect French landscape – wait a minute…this is not France! The LMNOP tam’s quilt is of a windy Italian street reminiscent of days gone by when summer lasted forever and before the iPhone there was the passeggiare. Join us on a stroll back to the simpler days.
Quilt Title: Common Threads
Hours: 150
Team Gensler
-Planners: Meaghan Button, Jamie Carusi, Kathryn Morse, and Carly Klaire
-Cutters: Nadine Vroom, Saramarie Shine, Em Meurer, Corina Benatuil, Lily Feinberg, and Santiago Rodriguez
-Sewers: Brenda Strand, Fitgi Saint-Louis, Elizabeth Cava, Elisabeth Mejia, Kevin Carlin, Jocelyn Mastroianni, Jeffrey Cook, and Sophie Reid
Inspired by the textile arts of indigenous peoples of the Americas, our vibrant quilt is based upon our environment. The geometric forms are created with colors found throughout the country’s rich landscapes. We celebrate our connection to the earth and our tapestry of cultures.
Quilt Title: Silver Linings
Hours: 145
Team Quilt as Charged: Heather Groff, Marita Salwierz, Paula Turkowitz, Melissa Richardson, Rachel Reding, Lee Cannon, and Vivian Zhen
Inspired by a combination of community, nature, and the challenges we face to keep connected. This quilt represents an abstracted image of a nighttime landscape. The puzzle motif reinforces the theme of connections while creating a dynamic yet traditional form. The traditional tying method is done in a silver filament thread mimicking a star filled sky.
