A Winning ‘Timepiece’: Madeline Bajracharya’s Quilt Is On A Journey

By Shannon Hicks

Newtown resident Madeline Bajracharya was among 50 quilt artists this year to be named a finalist for International Quilt Festival’s “Millennium Quilt Contest: A Quilt for the Year 2000.” Madeline’s work, a large-scale piece called “Timepiece,” was selected from among hundreds of pieces that were submitted by quilt artists around the world.

The Millennium Quilt Contest, sponsored by Quilts, Inc., challenged artists to “make a quilt for the ages to carry messages, make statements, and tell tales to be passed along to the next millennium.” The quilts selected as finalists were presented on public display during the 26th International Quilt Festival, presented at Brown Convention Center in Houston, Tex., November 2 through 5.

The International Quilt Festival, the largest annual quilt convention, show, sale, and quiltmaking academy in the world, takes place annually in Houston. More than 51,000 people from around the world attend the extravaganza, which has been dubbed “The World’s Fair of Quilts” by Southern Living magazine.

Several thousand people participate in more than 200 classes, lectures, and seminars during the annual quiltmaking academy, while hundreds of quilts, original cloth dolls, and art garments are featured in special exhibits. Retailers from across the nation set up more than 700 merchant booths in 250,000 square feet of exhibit space at the convention center.

Following the close of the November 2 through 5 convention in Houston, the quilt then moved to the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles to become part of a touring juried international exhibition called “Out of Time: Textile Art for the Millennium.” The exhibition, according to curators’ notes, presents a broad spectrum of interpretations of time in textile art. “Out of Time” opens at the California-based museum this Friday and will remain on view until January 21, 2001.

Madeline Bajracharya has been making quilts for just under three decades. She came to the United States in 1972 as an occupational therapist trainee, saw a photo of a quilt in a magazine, and says she thought, “I can do that.” From that moment, she began teaching herself and like many artists, a lot of her work was the result of trial and error.

“There were no books on quilting at that time,” Madeline recalled recently. “I had learned some sewing as a child, but quilting was different. I just learned by my mistakes, and kept going.”

Her first quilt, she says, was a queen-size piece. “I thought I would never finish it!” she laughed. Among the many lessons she has picked up over the years, Madeline quickly found out that using a quilt frame would make working on the larger quilts and wall hangings much easier.

Madeline and her husband Rupak moved to Newtown five years ago. In that time, Madeline has made enough quilts to cover nearly all of the walls of their Hanover Road home; visitors are greeted with wall hangings from the moment they walk in the front door.

“Eternal Waterfall,” which hangs at the top of the first stairway landing opposite the Bajracharyas’ home, was designed by Madeline and Rupak’s son Max, currently a student at MIT. Max and older brother Oliver, who attends law school in Tulane, New Orleans, both have quilts made by their mother with them at school.

“Timepieces” was a natural quilt for Madeline to create, as clocks of all shapes, styles, and sizes surround her at home. The large-scale piece, which measures 61 inches wide by 76 inches tall, presents an intricate design that while being technical in aspect is nevertheless pleasing to the eye.

The quilt does not seem to have a singular focus, yet the eye is generally drawn to a yellow clock face with Roman numerals in the upper third of the quilt. The center of the clock face, rather than having a design, shows some of the inside cogs of a working clock.

The quilt also features a number of circles and large arcs, all of different colors and sizes. The original design used hundreds of pieces of fabric to create the overall look. Much of the fabric was hand-dyed, which is something Madeline began doing a few years ago, she says, when she couldn’t find fabrics in colors she liked working with.

A geographic pattern emanates from the yellow clock face, in shades of blue moving from the right of the clock and shades of violet moving outwards from the left side of the clock. The border of the quilt has the opposing colors running around the rectangle; a predominately red-purple border runs along the upper right corners of the quilt, while a blue border captures the lower left edges.

Madeline did not get to the show in Houston to see her quilt again or to view the work of the other 49 finalists, but she has been to the festival in the past. Houston does not also represent the first time her work has been noticed. “Revelry,” another large quilt that was done in 1997, was a finalist in a contest called “Rhapsody for Roses,” and is now in Europe. She also won second place in the applique category at the American Quilters Society show in Padukah, N.Y., that same year with a bed quilt entitled “Rococo Garden.”

She is a member of Scrapbag Quilters of Newtown, a group that meets weekly at a member’s home, and also of the Ridgefield-based Nutmeg Quilters Guild. Being a members of Society of Creative Arts of Newtown has also been a boon for her quilting work. Madeline says she sometimes finds inspiration from the artwork she sees done by her fellow members.

Now that the quilting bug has bitten, Madeline finds she is almost constantly working on new pieces.

“I have a few quilts in progress right now, including a new one for my husband’s office,” she said. “I find if I don’t have a quilt going, I’m not happy.”