Diane Hire, Oxymoron Quilts

Diane Hire, the Renegade Quilt group member who thought up the idea of Oxymoron Quilt and edited the book showing the 40 quilts which were displayed in several of the big quilt shows from 2000 to about 2004, was the speaker at the Bayberry Quilt Guild meeting this week. She chose to give her lecture and slide show about the collection which I found very interesting. I have had the book for some years and returned to it occasionally because I didn't understand just what was going on in some of the quilts. Diane's talk clarified that. Along the way she described the many different approaches to creating something from a prompt used by these quilt artists. I'm always fascinated by the creative process. Diane is a comfortable and practiced speaker.

As speakers at the meetings are asked to do, she gave workshops the following days. I rarely take workshops and had those days full anyway. One was called "Come Play With Me" which is the title of another books she's written. This dramatic quilt was hanging for us to see. Many of her smaller quilts were displayed on tables. Unlike many uptight quilt makers, she was comfortable with the quilts being touched, with people looking at the backing and asking questions. I noted that she likes using buttons as embellishment as I do. She's used a number of freely improvisational styles. I think I would have enjoyed that workshop. The Oxymoron quilts book is entitled Absurdly Logical, Oxymoron Quilts and is now out of print but still available at Amazon.com. I'm only sorry I didn't take my copy and ask her to autograph it.