He’s A Winner Baby!!

If you follow our blog at all, you may have seen a post on August 19 regarding Joey Santangelo, son of Holly, a Crazy Quilters member. Joey qualified to enter his amazing Asian inspired jacket, titled Goldfish, into the Pacific International Quilt Festival, which ran from October 13-16 in Santa Clara, CA. This is a juried and judged competition. Juried means your art piece will first be reviewed and evaluated for it to be included in the event. Judged means approved works for exhibit will be evaluated to determine which pieces will win and at what level, ie. first, second, etc. So basically, you have to first qualify before your artwork is even accepted. This creates a highly competitive standard and showing of works of the highest quality.

We have just learned that Joey has won 1st Place in the Wearable Art Competition in the Vest, Jacket or Coat category. This does not surprise us and as we said in our first post, we are all so proud of him as if he were our own son or grandson! The link to the winners gives little information other than the category and name of the quilt. I have searched for the artist’s statement describing his jacket but to no avail.

I would try to see if Joey could provide us with more details but he is busy again in London working as a costume designer. I’m sure he referred to many of the skills he’s learned designing costumes for the theatrical shows he’s been involved in and yes, from his experience working as part of the costume team on the production of Bridgeton – seasons 1 and 3 for the character Daphne. Use this LINK to look back on some of Daphne’s season 1 costumes. Joey had a hand in making 7 of Daphne’s 100 costumes worn. Here’s another LINK with a follow-up article from his former college with a little more of Joey’s history regarding how he got involved working for the Bridgeton team.

UPDATE – JACKET CONSTRUCTIONS FROM JOEY SANTANGELO: It’s a quilted doublet made from a self-drafted pattern. Although it’s not period accurate, I think it definitely evokes the correct period.

The fabric was made by me by cutting strips of red fabric and then arranging them in an ombre pattern from the bottom to the top. The red scraps were arranged and held in place by a few little dots of tacky glue. It’s on a base layer of muslin. I placed red tulle over the piece. Together with a layer of batting and cotton as the base I quilted through the layers with gold thread. Where the gold thread quilting lines crossed, I stitched a gold seed bead.

The fish were created using the collage style quilting where you cut scraps of fabric and then arrange them into the shapes you want. It was a lot like painting. After the fish were made, they also got a layer of tulle over them and different lines of machine quilting were added to create the intricate features of the fish.

Finished with gold buttons embellished with Swarovski crystals and gold aglets at the end of the shoulder ties.

Again, we wish Mr. Santangelo (Joey to his quilting “moms”) all the best in his future endeavors and will look forward to many more beautiful works of art whether they are on stage, the screen, or in another competition.