Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Quilt Festival




Quilt festival in Houston this year was wonderful as always. Karen, my wonderful friend from CA was my roommate. Carolyn, also from CA was also there. My husband's cousin Gladys from Louisanna comes every year and we get together to catch up. I never know how many friends will make the trip but it is a wonderful venue for a visit. I am so happy that MaryAnn, also from CA, stayed over after Market so we could connect once again.
As always, there were the most beautiful quilts and I thought I would share a few with you. Three to be exact.
But before I do, I want to put out a call to those of you who are like me, a traditional quilter. You are needed! The vast majority of entries were contemporary art quilts and while I have no problem with Art quilts, out of almost 400 entries there were only 37 traditional quilt entries. We exist, there are a lot of us and we need to share. I dare you!!!
The bottom quilt is called "On The Wings of a Dream" by Carol Bryer Fallert
The middle quilt is "Santa Claus Comes To Kirara's Hometown" by Ayako Kawakama ( My personal favorite
The top quilt is "Snapshot, Shannon's Bantam" by Denise Havlan
I hope you like what you see.

Monday, October 19, 2009

PIQF


Home from Houston Quilt Festival and excited by all I saw! I will share more of that in a few days. Today I want to talk about Pacific International Quilt Festival and my quilt " In My Garden"
I have not had a quilt to enter in competition in many years. Life gets in the way and time flies and suddenly it has been ten years, This quilt has been in the making for more than ten years and frankly I did not expect to do well with it. However, this morning I found it online and so here it is. It will belong to my daughter Kelly, when I have finished playing with it. I think she will be as happy as I am.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

More about scissors and thimble




I think this is a really pretty picture of my thimble and scissors and so decided to include another view. I find it interesting that a simple change in color for the background can change the look of the exact same items. It reminds me once again of the importance of color in quilting. However there are so many valid choices that a little experimentation is always in order. Sometimes I know exactly where my quilt is going and where it will end up. More often than not, however, the quilt comes together over time with those decisions made one at a time building on what has come before. Looking closely at the thimble I am sure you are beginning to get an idea of the wear beginning to show.

Moving up we have a closer look at the thimble. Can you guess how many holes there are and how much is simply wear? I guess I am a little weird because I really love what has happened to my thimble. It feels like a coming of age, not that I am not a little old for that. The final picture is very cool don't you think? Two holes and the rest are holes waiting to happen. I told you John is a good photographer didn't I? As I have gone over and over the pictures ( 304 of them ) I realized that I have a possibility of putting together a pretty nice art piece to hang in the sewing the sewing room! I'll share that too sometime whether you are interested or not. Look at this, two blogs posted in a week! maybe something good is happening.