As promised, I’m talking about the quilt show we went to last weekend. There were hundreds of quilts on display and dozens of vendors. A quilter’s dream :).
We started and ended with vendors simply because of the way the place was laid out. This was the most memorable shop of them all. If you look carefully, you’ll see that each of the three appliques are a single piece. Typically, an applique is multiple pieces of different fabrics (like the Sunbonnet Sues I’m making and will share another day). Because this technique struck me as so different, I snapped a picture of her “how-to” and of an example. This pic is the example one.
I noticed that owls were a common theme throughout several quilts. This made me reflect on my late grandmother (she passed away less than a year after I got married, long before I had kids). She was an avid quilter and also a collector of owls. Seeing the owl quilts and remembering her love of the night birds made me wonder if owl lovers also tend to be quilters or the other way round. Or if it’s just coincidence.
Hubby and I were struck by the simplicity of this one. Very little color, as it’s mostly white, but very beautiful all the same.
This one was Munchkin’s favorite quilt. He really liked the dragons. I’m not sure it was my favorite, but I did really like it.
Both of the older kids got to have a lesson in yarn making. This woman was so nice to teach them. And she let them keep the piece of yarn that they made as well as a piece of “raw” wool to compare what they started with to what they ended up with.
This one was neat. I liked the reflection of the buildings in the water. Upon closer look, you could see that it was accomplished not only with different fabrics but also by layering a kind of netting material over the lower half to mute the colors further.
I loved the decorative stitching on this one. And the colors :).
Here’s Seahawk with the block he designed. You’ll recall that Munchkin’s was Picture of the Week last Friday.
The kids also got to learn the proper technique for tying a quilt (as opposed to sewing the layers together). That’s something I’ve never learned. And I spent the time they were doing that feeding Small Fry, so I still don’t know how!
These two were very similar in their construction: both were composed of hundreds of tiny (probably 2×2 or 3×3 inch) squares. The red and yellow one was hubby’s favorite of the day and my second favorite. If I remember correctly, it was the blue ribbon winner in the pieced quilt category. Rightly so!
These are just several that caught my eye, in no particular order.
And finally, my favorite:
Look carefully and you’ll see carrots and a beet under the ground (that’s my favorite feature of this quilt) and all sorts of other features that cross the framing barriers.
Which one is your favorite?
–Wendy
That is amazing talent! Do people use machines for some of them?
Yes. For most, if not all of them. I think for the people who are of that caliber, they use the huge quilting machines (called “long arm quilters”). There were voting categories for “long arm quilting by hand” which means they moved the quilt around underneath the needle themselves and “long arm quilting – computer” which means they put a design into a computer hooked up to the sewing machine and let it do its thing. As for me, I’ve only ever used my regular at-home machine for making quilts. I’m not in the big leagues, lol.