Quilt Festival 2019

It was another great year at Quilt Festival! This event is a mainstay on my yearly calendar now and makes the end of October/beginning of November really fun. I went to both Quilt Market and Quilt Festival, so I had a decent amount of time to check out the show itself. Here are some of my favorites from this year!

p.s. There are 60+ pictures in this post, so get comfy!

p.p.s. In the interest of not making this post any larger, I grouped some quilts into galleries. To see a larger version of the photo just click on it.

p.p.p.s Previous years: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

I’m gonna kick things off by sharing my own quilt! Yay! My Cherrywood Challenge entry was a finalist this year and thus on display along with more than 100 others. (And in the month since, it has now traveled to Ontario!)

Quilt Festival was celebrating its “sapphire” 45th anniversary with a gorgeous exhibit of blue and white quilts. The variety of designs was awe-inspiring and my only complaint was that you couldn’t get a close-up look at the quilts that were hung from the ceiling.

My friend-of-a-friend Dawn Zapp had her version of a Judy Niemeyer pattern selected for this exhibit! So exciting!

I enjoyed seeing several quilts by online modern quilting friends on display! Most of these were in the MQG Showcase, but a couple were part of other collections.

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day by Suzie Driver

I thought this quilt was a brilliant use of striped and polka dotted fabric. I also like the combination of a grid with a more star-like design.

This is an interpretation of the traditional Bow Tie block and while the color palette isn’t my fave, I love how 3-dimensional it feels! The quilting was perfect for the design too.

Paquin used curved lines and strategic color changes to draw butterflies. Really cleaver!

Amy Pabst made a large series of quilts that are all log cabin blocks, and all feature very, very tiny pieces. I read that there are more than 100,000 pieces of fabric in this collection! WOW.

This quilt was totally gorgeous, made from dyed and painted fabrics and featuring some top-notch curved piecing.

Okoye: Wakana Warrier by Laurie Ceesay Landree

One exhibit featured quilts inspired by sci-fi and comics. These were three of my favorites, featuring images and characters from Black Panther, Star Wars, and Marvel comics.

I liked the calming color palette and watercolor-ish look of this quilt.

This Eiffel Tower quilt was huge, and so, so, SO textured. I can’t even imagine how much it must weigh with all of the yarn and fabric strips and embellishments. It was stunning!

Maria Shell’s quilts were featured in both the SAQA exhibit and the “Rising Stars” section. I saw one of her quilts at QuiltCon last year (or maybe the year before) and love her use of color and pattern.

I wasn’t surprised to see Jose admiring this airplane-inspired quilt!

This quilt was inspired by the recrystallization of rock from a liquid state back to solid after the shock of a meteorite collision. Awesome inspiration, and awesome graphic impact.

Shock and Awe by Andrew Lee and Angie Lamoree

This one was based on the iconic Joe Rosenthal photograph, and made by a combat veteran struggling with PTSD. It was quite large, and drew you in from across the hall.

My girls liked this octopus, inspired by vintage illustrations and made with hand-dyed fabric.

Raconteur – The Storyteller’s Collection by Cinzia White

There are 359 blocks in this quilt, most designed by the quilter. One of them has 147 pieces within the block itself, and there are 14,000 pieces in the quilt as a whole. Color me impressed!

Mid-Century Medley by Lou Ann Smith, Maren Johnston, Patty Six and Debra Blake

You could tell this quilt was mid-century inspired without even having to read the description! I love that it was a group quilt as well.

I saw Angela’s “Vader” quilt at QuiltCon last February, and this one based on a photo of her husband, is made in the same style. I’m fascinated by her grid + paper piecing technique, and how she slightly alters colors here and there in a really interesting way.

This quilt was amazing and gorgeous and all the adjectives. This is the kind of quilt I dream of making some day because it looks so intricate and complex and mind-blowing.

This was inspired by Kilauea’s eruption and the incandescent lava that came with it.

This quilt was improvisationally pieced and just felt so happy! I thought the “Good Vibrations” name was perfect.

I have seen a couple of Nakayama’s quilts now, and they totally blow me away. Her technique is based on traditional mola reverse applique techniques from Panama. This one feels spacey to me!

This quilt was designed with an uneven log cabin block and mostly made during a Boston Modern Quilt Guild retreat. So rainbowy!

Iconoclastic Reflection by Barbara Forister and Jill Schneider Vickery

Architecture and similarly-inspired quilts always catch my eye, and these three were all great. “Iconoclastic Reflection” was inspired by the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Israel. “Florence at Dusk” features the Duomo that’s been a favorite of mine ever since learning about how it was built in 10th grade. And “Beautiful Taiwan” was so bright it felt like the thread was somehow glowing — totally amazing.

This quilt was in the SAQA section featuring 50 years of innovative art. Junker used small pieces of fabrics, layered and stitched, to create a pointillism effect.

Fractals were the design inspiration for this one, and this particular design was computer-generated. Tech + quilting is always a good thing.

“Champagne Supernova” won one of the large prizes this year. I twas meant to be a red and black quilt, but took on a life of its own! I’m certainly glad it did, because the colors were fantastic.

According to the description, “boteh” is the Persian word for paisley. This one used a lot of different techniques, from traditional piecing to fabric paining to applique to couching.

The bouree is a French dance from the 17th century, and this quilt reflections the rhythms of that dance. The strips really added an extra element to this design.

The bright, bold red drew me to this quilt, even though I rarely use that color in my own projects. The quilter is from Arizona, and the design was inspired by traditional native weavings.

2 Degrees Celsius by Stephanie Zacharer Ruyle

This was a quilt created by BeeSocial, with each member creating “a personal resolution channeling the ever-present undercurrent of climate change.”

This was a follow-on quilt Smith made after using the warthog motif in her entry in the Lion King-themed Cherrywood Fabrics Challenge a few years ago. It was so detailed! My girls liked it too, as you can see.

A Quilter’s Doodle Quilt by Karen Miller

The quilting on this fun piece was really amazing, as you can see! This was part of an exhibit sponsored by Aurifl, featuring all the fun things you can do with their threads.