I lucked out last Friday with a meeting-less calendar at work…so I took the day off and went to the International Quilt Festival! I did the same thing last year and it worked so well that I was excited to be able to do it again — because as much as Emma likes to play with fabric, and as much as Jose likes the quilts I sew, I don’t think either one of them would have appreciated me dragging them around for several hours on Saturday or Sunday!
I spent a couple hours wandering the display area, and another couple hours checking out some of the many, many, many cool things for sale. I ended up buying several half-yards of Cotton + Steel basics for a quilt design I have in mind, and one of these neat ideal seam guides to help me perfect my 1/4-inch seam. I also bought two gadgets designed for free motion quilting — a “pounce pad” starter set to temporarily mark designs on fabric and a multi frame kit from Flynn Quilts.
The frame kit (seen in active above) was my biggest purchase and also my biggest gamble, since it’s specifically for free motion quilting — something I haven’t tried yet. But I was able to play around with the one they had in their booth, and thought it was both useful and a very clever solution for someone like me who will never own a longarm quilting machine! I’m looking forward to playing around with it soon. (I only bought the partial kit, so I need to buy rods from the hardware store to make it work.)
How lucky am I that the Quilt Festival happens every year in my own city? Here are several of the amazing quilts on display that caught my eye:
I have such a huge amount of respect for a quilt like this, made up of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of tiny little pieces. I’m not sure I have the patience to tackle a project like this myself, but the results are stunning. (Also? This whole quilt was HAND PIECED!)
Across the Universe by Margie Werntz & quilted by Su Gardner
This one commemorated one of the quilter’s first dates with her future husband, who was a physics grad student at the time. I like it for several reasons — the spacey theme (obviously), the color combination, and the chunky piecing. The description said she based the piecing on Louisa Smith’s Strips ‘n Curves method. (I’ll be checking out that link in more detail soon, because I’d like to play around with this method for sure.)
Spider Lilies by Carol Morrissey
Once again, there was a large display of photo-realistic quilts. I tend to favor bolder, more graphic and abstract designs but while I don’t have a lot of interest in making one of these myself, I’m VERY intrigued by the process of how they are put together. I still don’t totally understand what goes into making something like this!
Tutti Frutti City Skyline by Susan Bleiweiss
I just liked how happy this quilt seemed, with its bright colors and funky angles. The window panes were all very tiny, and even after peering closely at it, I’m not sure whether they were appliqued or printed onto the fabric.
Three Brains by Laura Espenscheid
This quilter has survived two different cancers five different times, and decided to make a quilt from a CAT scan of her brain. Jose said this one was creepy, but I thought it was fascinating!
Canola Fields by Leah Gravells
This type of quilt is totally up my alley. From a distance, it clearly looks like a landscape but up close, you can see that it’s relatively simply — the whole thing is just made of up thin horizontal strips. There are 199 of them in the quilt, so I’m sure it took a good amount of time to construct, but overall it really shows how even simple technique can produce really cool results.
If I ever do something that starts to approach being photorealistic, I think it would be a design like this. I love everything about this one. It’d be such a great piece to hang on a wall!
Stars on Mars by Gail Stepanek and Jan Hutchison
This one was AMAZING. It won a $5,000 prize, and the two quilters happened to be standing there talking about it when I walked by. Gail did the piecing using a paper-pieced star of her own design, and changed up the look of each star by shifting which lines in the template she sewed on. Each star is made up of 16 wedges, so to avoid having 16 points coming together in the middle, Gail added two 1/2-inch strips forming an “x” on each star…but you can’t really see them here because they are masked by the amazing quilting that Jan did. That involved putting the quilt through the machine three separate times to create different looks with different threads, and different textures and amounts of loft. There is some really clever stuff going on here, and it was totally inspiring.
Tour License Plate Quilt by Various Artists
This quilt was made by a group of 50 bloggers, each representing their home state. Texas and North Carolina were so close to each other that I had to smile.
Ready For The Wedding by Christina Kreiser; Quilt with Friends by Sunisa Cote
There were both more stunning examples of tons of tiny pieces creating something incredible. Although made by a Canadian, the one on the left was actually inspired by Hurricane Ike hitting Galveston 6 years ago — the turmoil of the storm and the harmony of people coming together to recover. (The design began with Be Colorful by Jacqueline deJonge, which I am now obsessed with.)
The quilt on the right is made up of hundreds of cathedral window blocks. This is a technique I’ve had on my “to try” list for a while, so this quilt is definitely inspiring me to get to it!
Funky Junk by Renee Tallman; Communion by Martha Kinman
Both of these reminded me of gemstones, and included a lot of the angled, jagged, irregularly shaped piecing that appeals to me so much right now. I also liked the description of the one on the left, which had been pieced and cut and pieced and ripped several times before the quilter finally arrived at something she liked. Proof that if things don’t turn out right, you can try, try again.
Cemposuchil by Cheryl Riverbark
Since I was at the festival on Halloween, I had to smile at this quilt covered in sugar skulls.
One of the highlights of the show for me, obviously, was the huge display of astronomical quilts made from the star blocks submitted for astronaut Karen Nyberg’s challenge! There were more than 2,000 blocks submitted, which were then sewn into more than 20 quilts of 80 blocks each. (Blocks that were submitted late were featured in albums on the tables in the area.)
The red, white and blue block in the center of this photo is the one Karen quilted while living on the International Space Station last year!
This awesome one featuring the NASA meatball was made by my new friend Jen with help from her space-obsessed 5-year-old. I got to meet them on Saturday and gave them a tour of Mission Control. Hooray for blogging/quilting/space coming together in fun ways!
There’s my block! So exciting! (Next goal: have a full quilt displayed at the show!)
The blue, yellow and white block in the middle was done by my friend Rachel.
Compas du Marinier by Christine Imbaud; Mediterranean Beauty by Claudia Myers & quilted by Marilyn Badger
Both of these had so many tiny points! I have no idea how people keeps points sharp on such a huge design like this. It’s so impressive to me, and the result is dizzying — in a good way.
Tessellating Wings by Wendy Butler Berns
This one caught my eye from at least 50 feet away thanks to the bright, bold colors and the obvious reference to a butterfly. Designs like this always involve applique, which I have never really done (aside from this MIT onesie). Yet another thing to add to my to-try list, right?
Colors of the Ocean by Anna Dolanyi
This one was both hand sewn and hand quilted, but what I really like is how from a distance, the lines look like curves but when you see it up close, it’s all straight lines and blocks.
Whew! And to think this is only a very small sampling of all the beautiful quilts on display!
Jen de Jong says
What is amazing to me is that I only got to see a couple of the quilts that you saw. I could have spent a full day just looking at the quilts, probably with a quizzical look on my face trying to figure out how they were made. We spent 90 minutes looking at star blocks alone (thanks for picturing mine).
I was going to go back for the pounce pad! Please let me know what you think of it after you try it out!