IIDA NY Hosts Sustainable Quilt Auction

The IIDA New York Chapter recently hosted its 5th Annual Sustainable Quilt Auction at Openhouse Gallery in New York. The highest bid went to Team E’s riff on a painting by Henri Rousseau, The Dream, produced by Saffron Chung, Andrew Fuston, Sean Pollock, Andrea Reay, Janet Salzer, Ruta Strobel and Jack Weisberg.

During the standing room only event, gallery walls were draped with handcrafted quilts created by 11 teams from the A&D industry. Participants met over the course of nine months at Herman Miller‘s New York showroom for a quilting bee and together took each design from conception to production.

“We got tired, as an industry, of all the samples that get discarded,” says Abigail French, cofounder of the event, of how the auction began in 2008. “[Quilting] is really one of the earliest form of recycling and a wonderful way to utilize the fabrics that people are throwing out anyway.”

The IIDA NY Chapter has proudly auctioned off more than 20 quilts since 2008. This year, all proceeds were donated to support The Fiver Children’s Foundation, a youth-development organization that mentors children in New York public schools from third grade through high school.