Anchorage Daily News

The hottest art display in town -- or at least the warmest -- is filling the Conoco Phillips atrium this weekend.

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The 11th annual Great Alaska Quilt Show, sponsored by the Anchorage Log Cabin Quilters, features more than 100 pieces of sculpture in stitchery, both of the bedding and wearable-art varieties.

Today, as in earlier years, an auction of small quilts will take place, and one large quilt will be raffled off.

The "featured quilter" this year is longtime Anchorage resident, former teacher and retired IRS agent Linn Andrews.

Andrews started her first quilt shortly after moving here as a teenager 50 years ago. "But that's not what got me into quilting," she writes in an autobiography submitted to the Daily News.

No. What set her to needling patches together was the simple fact that, as a young mother, she found herself going to endless rounds of baby showers.

"Little outfits got so expensive, I decided to make baby blankets instead."

From that practical application, she came to relish the art.

Many of her pieces exhibit strong, balanced geometry. She attributes that to her lifelong interest (and university degree) in mathematics.

Beyond that, however, is a flair for bright colors -- she never buys white or beige fabrics unless they're needed for special projects, she says -- and flashes of whimsy.

Her fabric stash is a catalog of primary colors and quirky images, including 200 cat designs.

"You never know when you are going to need a piece of fabric with a flying pig on it or a picture of Elvis," she says.

After leaving government service, she worked for seven years at the now-closed Quilt Works shop. Now she spends her happiest hours in a large sewing room (27 by 19 feet) above the garage of her Hillside home.

The workshop is filled with cubes holding materials and unfinished jobs, bookshelves lined with quilting books, two Bernina machines in sewing tables and colossal numbers of projects in progress -- "a real mess," she admits. But, she adds, "I love my space."

Quilting time has been limited, however, by a recurrence of breast cancer, which she has been battling for five years.

"I only sew when I feel up to it," she writes. "The chemo I am on has made my fingers very tender, so I do no handwork at all."

Which isn't that bad, she notes, in that she never considered herself "a finisher" anyway. She likes picking out fabrics and piecing quilts together but isn't so keen on making backs and binding.

"But I do finish a quilt if I have a reason to finish it," she writes, "the reason usually being because it is going to someone."

Chemo or no, the practicality of the craft continues to be a motivation for Andrews. She has donated a number of quilts to charity and estimates she's given more than 60 to friends and relatives.

Cheaper than buying little outfits.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

Great Alaska Quilt Show

The event continues from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today in the atrium of the Conoco Phillips building, 700 G St.

The Small Quilt Auction closes at 2 p.m.; the Raffle Quilt Drawing will take place at 3:30 p.m. Admission is free.

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