NORTH BAY — When Mary Schroeder was a young dancer, someone once told her the difference between a good dancer and a very good dancer was time, persistence and commitment. Now, more than 20 years later, she realizes the same advice applies to her new art medium: quilting.

“I think it’s like (this with) many artists: Why do they paint? Why do they do sculpture? It’s the desire to create,” said Schroeder, 48, who has quilted since 2000.

Although somewhat new to quilting, Schroeder has already placed at a number of quilting shows, from those held at the Coos County Fair to several major national and international competitions.

In April, her quilt “Flowers, Frogs and Fishes” will go up against quilting celebrities at the 24th-annual American Quilter’s Society Show & Contest. Considered the most prestigious quilting competition in the United States, the show, held in Paducah, Ky., received 798 entries. Only 395 made it to the semifinals.

Schroeder’s quilt was among them.



“They are the best of the best,” Schroeder said of the AQS show, which runs April 23 to 26, and another competition in Houston.

She said when she learned she was accepted to the competition she began e-mailing her family messages: “I’m running with the big dogs, but I’m not a big dog.”

“I’m in with people who are very, very good. But I don’t think that I’m that good. They’ve been at it for years. I’m, you know, still dabbling,” Schroeder said. “Really, I’m just happy to get in.”

This year’s event represents the second time Schroeder has submitted a piece to the Paducah show. She entered in 2003, but was turned down by the Quilting Society.

“I overshot my ability trying to get in then,” Schroeder said. “It was a very nice quilt ... (but) it was not on that level of competition.

“The competition is fierce enough that you must bring something new to the table — design-wise, innovation-wise.”

The inspiration for “Flowers, Frogs and Fishes,” a 44-by-70-inch long wall quilt featuring about 50 origami-style cloth flowers, golden koi fish and flowing streams of water, is Japanese wood block prints and other aspects of the Japanese aesthetic Schroeder picked up during her years of dancing professionally at cabaret shows in Japan.

“When you live in a country, you are surrounded by their design aesthetic and I loved that — their wood block prints, their basic design motifs,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said she also hand-painted the fish and used rhinestones and holographic thread to make her quilt pop.

“I’ve never met an embellishment I didn’t like,” she said, while fingering another quilt stitched with the shining holographic thread. “I blame it on doing cabaret shows with way too many rhinestones and feathers.”

Surrounded by patterns and squares of cloth in her living room, Schroeder said she’s always enjoyed working with her hands, but after seeing how much could be done with quilts, she decided to try her hand at it. It didn’t hurt that she has a soft spot for colorful and unusual cloth.

“It’s a tactile art,” Schroeder said. “If people go to a quilt show expecting their grandmothers’ quilts, they will see some of those, but they will see other things happening. It is quite different now.”

But learning to quilt wasn’t exactly easy for Schroeder. In fact, she almost gave up the whole operation until she discovered a slightly easier process while her skill level picked up.

“There is nothing like success to make you want to stick with something,” she said.

Now, when she’s not teaching at the Pacific School of Dance or choreographing shows at Little Theatre on the Bay in North Bend, Schroeder will spend as much as 20 hours a week quilting.

“I do the design that’s interesting to me, and I have a head full of designs,” Schroeder said.

Bonnie Browning, the executive show director for the American Quilter’s Society, said entering the Paducah show is a two-pronged process. Quilters from across the country, as well as international participants from Canada, France, the Netherlands, Korea, Japan, Brazil, Italy and Australia, send in photos of the quilt or quilts they wish to enter. Then, a team of three jurors weed through the images for top entries. She said they look for visual impact, design, color, workmanship and scale.

“They try to choose about 400 of the best ones of all the entries we received,” Browning said. “Usually the quilters think they are a winner just by being juried in as a semifinalist, because the contest is very keen. We get some of the best quilts in the world entered in this contest.”

After the first judging process, quilts are sent early to the show for a second round of judging. At that point, another set of judges will spend two days prior to the show, judging the quilts, and choosing winners. The quilter whose quilt receives the title of best in show, also wins a prize purse of $20,000, while other quilters will receive $12,000 for best hand-workmanship, $12,000 for best machine-workmanship and $5,000 for best long-arm workmanship.

Altogether, the competition will have about 60 winners, and hand out nearly $120,000.

“When they come to our show it’s really a social gathering of 35,000 women in a town of 26,000. We fill every hotel for 40 or 50 miles in every direction,” Browning said.

She added that participants and spectators will stay in towns in Missouri, Illinois and clear down to the Tennessee border, to visit the show, which also includes 150 workshops and lectures, a fashion show and an awards presentation.

“Basically it’s a weekend of eating, sleeping and drinking quilts,” Browning said.

But Schroeder won’t be going.

Having already attended the International Quilt Association show in Houston late last year, where her quilt “Sisters”  was juried in, Schroeder said it’s just a matter of finances. She said she simply hadn’t expected to get into two of the biggest shows in the country so close together. She added she doesn’t expect to win at Paducah, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be waiting for that phone call urging her to come to Paducah and attend the awards ceremony.

“If it rings in the evening hours, I’ll answer it fast, you betcha,” Schroeder said.