Road to California–In Perfect Harmony

I’d Like to Teach the World the Quilt in Perfect Harmony
Bert Garino, Florida

Before I get to the wonderful quilt above, made by a friend of mine, I’ve had some interesting responses on my posts about Road.  I hope I made it clear I was not denigrating any of the quilters who made the snazzle-dazzle quilts.  They’ve spent hours and hours on their creations and while I may moan about the proliferation of these types of quilts at this particular show, my observations should in no way imply that their quilts are deficient in any way.

Bert notes that: “Bling” was the keyword for winners at Houston this year too.  I find it interesting that so many of the prizewinning quilts show up at so many different shows.  It seems to be a business for the winners, and the rest of us lifelong quilters just go to see what they have come up with each year.  I’ve been a “quilt angel” in Houston the last few years, and so I got to hear a lot of comments from quilt viewers.    It seems that a lot of the quilts are more intimidating than inspirational to a lot of quilters.

Rachel says: I think your observations have really been spot on.  Perhaps the reason we are more inspired by the vendors is because they are making/selling the kinds of quilts we want to make.  I’ve noticed the trend toward show quilts.

Kris made the comment that: I agree that show quilting has gone to a whole different level, but I think that it is worth mentioning that the “bling” quilts you are showing were designed for the art or non-traditional innovative quilting categories.  They were specifically not made as traditional quilts and as such really can’t be compared to them.

Now back to this quilt.

Bert Garino, who served as President of the Mt. Vernon chapter of the Quilters Unlimited Guild in Virigina (a HUGE guild of 11 chapters) shortly after I left DC, made this quilt for the guild’s quilt show in February 2009, where the challenge was “All the World’s a Stage.”  She says that she “loved this little quilt so much, I thought more folks should see the message written on it,” and she enetered it into Houston where it was juried it as “Art – Whimisical.”

“The letters written across the earth were done with a permanent pen, and then I quilted around each of the letters.  The legs, arms and quilts were done with fabric pens.  Each of the little quilts was then quilted individually before being appliqued to their little person in the larger quilt.  On the sun I trapunto-ed the Chinese symbols for harmony and the doves flying in the sky are carrying various thread bits.    The quilt was made to bring a smile to people’s faces and to share in the joy of each quilt maker’s journey.”

Bert writes “It just smiled on the wall hanging amidst all these ‘thousands of work hour’ quilts, wondering how it got there.  I think we all need to just enjoy the art and hard work of all the quilters, and know that we all have our favorites that we would like to emulate.  For me, the favorite quilts that I’ve made have been given to soldiers returning from Iraq, families in shelters or given to new babies, family and loved ones.”

Thanks, Bert.  Sometimes we get all wrapped up in the business of quilting, that we forget its origins as a necessity, as well as a way for early quilters to express some of their creativity.  I love that Bert sent me these pictures and the last one with her radiant smile helps me to remember why I quilt.

Happy Quilting!

Road to California, 2102–part 4

Sorry about finishing up the last Road post so abruptly.  I was headed out to have lunch with my son (a monthly event that had gotten sidetracked by my surgery) and to visit Purl Soho’s location in Tustin, California.  It’s sort of a non-fabric, fabric store, meaning all the inventory is there, but it’s warehouse style.  The ladies there are cheerful and helpful and I visited with them as I looked around.  They have a whole room of fabric and a whole room of yarns–so beautiful.  My fat quarter in Friday’s post was from there.  I bought it as much for the Purl Soho ribbon as the colors.

I’d like to finish up Road in this post, so forgive if it’s photo-heavy.

Mabel-A 1952 REO, was pieced and quilted by Susan J. Cane and is a depiction of the first antique truck that she and her husband purchased.  The techniques in this quilt came from a workshop by Katie Pasquini Masopust and include edge-turned machine applique and textile paint.

A View from Above, by Sheila Frampton-Cooper of Van Nuys, California began as a small color study, but began to grow.

Terrific, with fabulous quilting.

I call these two quilts “tablecloth” quilts as they are basically old lacy linens laid over a backing fabric, then quilted.  They are both by Cindy Needham of Chico, California; this one’s titled The Nuns Quilt as the linen was handmade by nuns in the 1900s.  This was hand-quilted and beaded.

Infinity (below) has beads and pearls added (no sparkles!), as well as a doily added to the center for embellishment.

Detail of Infinity.

I turned off the flash on the camera so as to show the quilting and detail better, so it might be slightly blurry.

I was getting tired by this point, so many of these I have no names for.  This was an interesting black and white quilt in Ricky Tims’ curated exhibit, which also included a whole passel of fabulous brilliantly colored quilts.

This is from the faculty section and this quilt is Karen Eckmeier’s: Seeking Balance.  Quite of few of our little quilting group head to this show, and at this point, I was walking with Laurel–this was her favorite.  We got up very close to see how it was done.

All these little houses are raw edge applique, overlayed with tulle, then quilted, a technique that’s been on my radar for some time now, but have never tried.

FriendLilyBlossoming, by Cynthia Neville, Karen Fitzpatrick, Mary Kay Runyon of St. Louis Missouri, and was quilted by Cynthia Neville.  These group of friends got together to create this quilt, a stunning pictoral image of lillies.

This glorious crazy piece quilt made a lot of us stop in our tracks because the colors are so un-typical of that type of quilt: bright greens, pinks, purples instead of the browny reds, navies and gold of antique crazy pieced quilts.

The title is Crazy for Flowers, and is made by Allison Aller.  There was a grouping of interesting crazy quilts in an exhibit, much like the faculty exhibit and the Ricky Tims collective of quilts.  I saw more of these at this year’s show, including an incredibly mediocre collection from a shall-not-be-named quilt guild from another part of the country, which was Sponsored By a retail establishment which shall also not be identified.  From there, I draw the Award Winners for The Ugly Quilt, a tradition on this blog.

Ugly #1.  This poor little quilt has nothing going for it: not design, fabric, balance, nor technique.  The overly plump flower petals distort the backing, pulling it out of square.  I can forgive some of this because this was her first quilt.  You’ve all seen mine and if I were to exhibit it in a Road to California setting, I could surely have won the Ugly Quilt award.

But Ugly Quilt #2 surely has no excuse: a hideous use of fabric/textile/yarn/whatever along with an edging that makes you scratch your head and wonder what was going on in HER head?

And here comes my bit of sour grapes.  Ahem.

When I see valuable floor space given over to these “Sponsored By” exhibits, I begin to wonder what in heaven’s name was going on the organizers’ heads (?) to admit these quilts onto their exhibit floor.  I’ve talked it over with a few people and it probably all comes to down to two things: time and/or money.  Time–it takes time to look through all our applications, sift through them, write us back, but all of that has been streamlined by a process where we upload online, pay online, type in our own blurbs by ourselves.  Money–For each quilt submitted, there is a ten-dollar fee, so Road extracted thirty bucks right out of my pocket.  That’s the game if you want to enter, and I get that.  They also took 20 more dollars out of my pocket (two days of entry).  So all told I “donated” fifty bucks to them even before I bought anything (of which the vendors pay rental, and if I’m not mistaken, a percentage of their sales to the Quilting Establishment).  While we think of this as a Quilt Show, it’s really a Business.  Fair Enough.

But when my quilts don’t get in, or the quilts of my friend Leslie, or the supposedly hundreds of other quilts that applied and were rejected–and then I see Ugly #1 and Ugly #2 in a “Sponsored By” booth–I begin to realize that these quilts are in here because somebody sponsored the group they came from (think $$$) which allowed them to claim floor space at Road.  I see the same thing at Long Beach–a really sparse exhibit, filled in only by groupings Sponsored By someone or another, but theirs is not a juried show.

Some exhibits are fascinating.  Some are of a single quilt artist, like the “quilt” of a foreclosed house by Susan Else, and are worth having.  But I saw too many in this show that, while there were some standout quilts, the bulk of the exhibit was a waste of my time and my money.  Is this the direction quilt shows are going?  They have to stay alive, as does any business, but when the value given is not worth the cost of the part of the consumer, the balance shifts.

For me, the balance has shifted to the vendors and their booths.  That’s where I am getting my ideas for quilts.  That’s where the “heart” of the show is now–with bright sunny smiles like that of Eleanor Burns–who understands the balance needed to keep the customer happy.

And I have to say, that the allure of shopping at a quilt show–with its variety of booths and vendors and different types of fabrics, has diminished now with the availability of fabrics over the internet.  Indeed, two of my favorite vendors didn’t make an appearance this year, but no worries– I’ll go and look them up online to peruse their wares.  And while nothing can substitute for seeing the quilts in person (and the reason I will probably always go to this show year after year), I can get a lot of this online from Flickr sites, blogs, and from magazines.

One favorite is Susan Gower of Nifty Thrifty Dry Goods, who comes with her van all the way from the other side of the country. I have a couple of her button and bead bracelets.

A new one: Traditions at the White Swan, all the way from Maryland.

Jillily Studio, with her clever and fun watermelon quilt pattern and a new line of fabrics.

And while I didn’t get a photo of their booth, with their fabulous quilts and ideas, I always stop at Superior Threads to say hi to Bob and Heather and see what’s up with thread.  (In fact, look for a giveaway from them later this month!)

Well, rant over.  I want to continue to go to this quilt show without feeling like I’m being sold down the river, or taken advantage of.  Perhaps the Powers That Be need to understand what a lot of our local quilt shops have figured out: customer service, good value and attention to the local clientale.

I’m leaving you with a few more photos, then will intersperse more over the coming weeks as needed.  Hope you’ve enjoyed a trip to the quilt show!

A Time for Healing–The Wannabees 1,000 Crane Quilt was made by a group of quilters from San Mateo California, in response to the tragedy of the tsunami in Japan last March.  They had all their friends from all over make and sign cranes, and were able to raise money to send for relief efforts.  It is truly a work of love and skill, and carries such a powerful message.  I could never find a time when someone wasn’t standing in front, reading the names on the cranes.

Detail.  I focused on this because I was gimping around, just after surgery, hoping to regain my health, but the idea of healing and hope and the thousand cranes is a resonant message, bringing solace to many.

And I’ll close with another image of me with a friend, a perfect bookend to the opening shot of Leisa and I standing together at the beginning of the show.  For over a year now, I’d been following Cindy on her blog, Live a Colorful Life.  I had first contacted her because of her pin cushions made out of selvages, offering her up some of my selvages.  I sent off a little package, glad that someone was using some of my fabrics in some way, and a few weeks later, she sent me a little box, with a sweet and wonderful pin cushion inside.  Through comments and emails, we moved from a more casual conversation to that of “pen pals,” if you can do such a thing electronically.  She wrote saying she was coming to Road, and I was able to meet up with her and her husband for lunch, and then we walked the floor for a while before I left for the day.

For I think we quilters really do like the community of quilters–we read and comment on each others’ blogs, we take ideas from one another, we link up for Works In Progress, Scraps, or various other online “bees”–a modern adaptation of the more traditional potluck-tie-a-quilt gathering of pioneer days.

Keep On Stitching!

Road to California–part 3

To start off this post, I thought the Baltimores would be a good thing, and since we already know from past posts that the person that hangs this show groups everything in a clump (Hello?  Have you heard about habituation?) it’s easy to find them. Oh, yes.  I get that I’m doing habituation too.  (Life’s little irony.)

The Bizzy Bird Farm is made and quilted by Julie Prose of Ottumwa, Iowa.  She writes that she did a lot of fussy cutting from Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  It’s a variation of  Kim McLean Roseville Album pattern, but Prose notes that she changed the borders.  Sorry about the mediocre picture–those shiny lines are the plastic tape they use to keep up from the quilts.

Detail.  I love the background fabric she used.

I’m a fan of the “pencil” fabric from Kaffe Fassett, used here for the logs in her log cabin.

Several members of the  Shadow Mountain Quilters, a guild from Pahrump Nevada, got together to made this quilt, titled American Tradition. While it looks like the borders are a free-floating zig-zag, the quilt is actually rectangle, with deep navy blue edging on the outside of the white vine border.  It was a beautiful quilt.

A little less traditional Baltimore Album quilt is this one, titled Our Garden, His and Mine.  It’s made by Judith Ledford, of Oceanside, California and quilted by Shawn York of Elfin Forest, California.  It took her nearly thirteen months, working every day to complete this.

Detail, showing the garden rake, trowel and plaid gloves by a pot of blooming red flowers.  I also love those blue morning glories, dangling down near her pieced triangle sashing.

Susie Wimer of Ranson, West Viriginia didn’t want to make a quilt like everyone else’s, so she went miniature in Mon Petit Baltimore.  She began by making one small block, then another, and another, using fabric left from other projects.  She used themes from antique albums and other 19th century genres.  She writes “For the cutouts, I just put scissors to paper and experimented.”

Close-up showing quilting.  The hand quilting took two months, stitching every day.

I think this is a type of Baltimore, although it doesn’t have the traditional white background.  Instead, Denise Nelms of Irvine California, chose to work her magic using wool instead of cottons on a black background.

The title of this beauty is Home and Harvest.  When you look closely, you can see the blanket stitches around each piece.  This is her second quilt using wool.

I took about three pictures of this block, trying to replicate the rich black background and the vibrant colors, but the massive overhead lights distorts everything.  You just have to know it was beautiful.

Mary Kay Davis’ quilt, A Sprinkling of Stardust, was made for a McCall’s quilting challenge and uses only two blocks: Delectable Mountains and Lone Star.  It positively glowed.

She made good use of Jane Sassaman fabrics.

Rare Catch is made and quilted by Diane Steffan of Lake Ozark, Missori.  She writes: “Blue lobsters are very rare genetic anomalies, a one in five million occurrence.”  This is both machine pieced and quilted.

I snapped a close-up to see the interesting variety of stitches used in the quilting.  These quilts, a pair, were some of my favorites.

Such a good use of fabric and quilting.  And because I am not a judge, I may not know what I’m talking about but to me a good quilt makes good use of both the medium and the way its used.  This quilt qualifies.

Ann B. Feitelson depicted the Ice on the Sawmill River with her pieced quilt.  This was another little gem of a quilt, tucked away without fanfare or ribbons that was beautifully executed.  She used different colors to represent snow, ice and water, and over-dyed African fabrics (the birds) to represent “what remains animated despite frigid temperatures.”

Detail, both of piecing and of the over-dyed bird fabrics.  Her use of stripes was masterful.

I can’t read the sign on this exquisite little pieced quilt of hexagons and free-form piecing.  It’s probably 2 feet high by about 18″ wide, and I loved it.  It was hanging in the hallway near the back of the show along with what we called the Cow Quilts.

Holy Cow! by Melody B. Macfarland; quilted by Pam Dransfeldt.

To go along with the theme of “holy” she had sewn milagros in among the cow’s spots.

Apparently these are all from a book by Mary Lou Weidman, and her cow quilt, above is titled Psy-COW-delic.  It was quilted by Kathy Woods.

Pana-Moo-Canal, made and quilted by Susan Typpi, was inspired by a quilting cruise she took with Mary Lou Wiedman and all the mola (fabrics) she purchased while on the cruise.

Veggie Cow, made and quilted by Kathy Collins.

COWmen Miranda, pieced by Sue Kresse, quilted by Kathy Woods

Road to California–part 2

I’ve had some really good comments from readers about Road to California and it’s interesting how they parallel what I was hearing behind me and around me from the attendees: nice quilts, but I’ll never make one of those.  And certainly I felt that way about the quilts I wrote about earlier.  So, thanks everyone, for writing.

There were a lot of quilts that when I looked at them  I began to ask myself: what is it about these that is different, special?  Here’s some more that I saw.

Beauty Parlor De Los Muertos, by Nancy C. Arseneault is a classic, as she got all the details just right.  She’s from Tucson, AZ.

Notice the clever use of fabric in the floor tiles!

Sunlit Circles, from Ann Petersen of Surprise, AZ uses spiky circles floated over the top of her quilt.  What makes this one really interesting, I think, is that border of quilted circles, with an occasional scalloped edge.

Nice quilting, and while close together, it’s not excessive.

And not one sparkle (yay!).

This is one of those quilts that you had to see to believe.  Titled The Loading Dock, and made by Mary Buvia of Greenwood Indiana, it reminded me of those books by Jan Brett with ornate illustrations all alongside the main panel. Bruvia hand appliqued much of this “during the long hours of chemo treatments” for her late husband.  She made this quilt in homage to him, as Christmas was his favorite holiday.

It was beautifully done.

Yes, it had sparkles, but this is one quilt that should have — to show the snow sparkling in the North Pole moonlight.  Just my .02 worth, here.

There were a series of quilts that used fabric to show texture in interesting ways–another use of hexagons in this quilt by Jean Spring (from Steamboat Springs, Colorado) and titled Three Gulls on a Wall.

Holly Dominie, from Readfield Maine, took Australian fabrics to a class given by Susan Carlson, intending to experiment in the “Pointillism” style.  This portrait of her daughter is titled Queen of My Heart.  It was stunningly beautiful, and I am sad that they hung the ribbon right on this work of art, which was based on photographs Dominie had taken.

I crept in right up to the quilt, then zoomed in, so you could see her amazing work with the fabrics, cutting, laying them down, then the random stitching.  I have to say I thought of one of my favorite blogs, written by Kathy Doughty, who features these fabrics (because she’s from Australia, for one thing) to great effect.

This one of her son is titled Irrepressible.  Same artist, same technique.  When I visited the vendor’s booth that had stocked these fabrics, they were flying off the bolt, snapped up by all of us quilters as we now envisioned what could happen.  Not that we’ll ever do it, of course, but we hope and believe that we can, inspired by these quilts.  And that’s my big gripe with those “show quilts” from the other post.  They DON’T inspire us.  We look at them, amazed by the hours and hours, but the stray comments I heard never indicated that a quilter wanted to go home and fire up her sparkle gun, or get busy quilting with lines 1/16th-inch apart.  I can admire their work, but that’s as far as it goes.  Of course, I could just be weird, an anomaly, but judging from what I heard, I don’t think I am.

This was just the perfect little piece–wavy edge reminiscent of a postage stamp–a tiny snapshot of a day.  And that’s the title: Snap Shot from Seaside, and it’s made by Mary Kay Price of Portland, Oregon.

I was very interested in the edge of that bridge–the spiky grasses, the grayed ledge. The grasses were raw edge appliqued, but really fused down somehow so they looked painted on.  And the edge?  Some fabric paint to blur and soften that so it melted into the picture.  Really beautiful.

Early Snow, by Yuki Harding from Green Valley, Arizona, was based on a photograph she had taken, of what I assume to be cherry blossoms shedding their blossoms.

Or I could be completely wrong, and it IS a first snowfall.  Whatever, it was interesting, and I loved how she created texture with fabrics and thread.

Here was another stunner of a quilt, that unbelievably only garnered a second place.  Titled The World, and made and quilted by Rachel Wetzler of St. Charles, Illinois, is her rendition of the genesis of the world.  It’s a well-balanced composition with great detail and good use of color and technique.  Maybe it only got a second because it didn’t have any sparkles on it? (Can you tell I’m so done with the sparkle business?)

Such an amazing quilt.  I hope it comes to a quilt show near you so you can sit and study it as well.

Kathryn Nolte, from La Habra Heights, California created this visual feast, titled Take in the Night Blooming Jazz, Man.  Sinewy, fluid shapes echo the subject of her quilt, with a real live “piano key” border.

Great quilting, too, putting more motion into this quilt.  Whenever I went by, there were lots of onlookers clustered around this quilt.

Check out the quilting on the piano player’s pants!

Obviously you are subject to my biases and personal preferences, but if I were to consider a quilt for the Best of Show Award, the following would be on the short list.

The Archer was made and quilted by Wendy Knight of San Diego, California.  Unfortunately, it was hung on a side aisle so the lighting isn’t as good I as I hoped for.  This quilt is expertly composed with lots of movement, color shifts and values, detail and on top of that is interesting.  It also had a crowd every time I went by.

Was I influenced by her expert quilting, writing in text into the background of her quilt?  No doubt.  These are words from the teachings of “Bushido–which is the way of the warrior.”  Her husband is a “student of Japanese history, in particular the Samurai culture” and it obviously influenced her subject matter.

The circular piecing and quilting on the horse’s neck really showed the form of the animal.

More detail. . . and more quilts in the next post!  My husband has just made me some fresh-squeezed orange juice downstairs and I’m headed to a late Saturday morning breakfast.  Enjoy your day!

Road to California-I

I started going to this show about 20 years ago, give or take a year or two, when it started out across the street in the Marriott hotel, so I know its history.  It was an offshoot from a local fabric shop and in those early years most of the displays were home-grown, local quilt artists and so you went to see people you know.  The woman who ran the show put on a good game, with lots of good vendors; she had a knack.

About 3 or 4 years ago (or so the scuttlebutt goes) she hired a new person to help her hang the show, run the displays, and since that time I’ve seen it tilt heavily to overly quilted quilts with lots of spangles and sparkles.  This year, I’d have to say that the show has hit a new low, and I started referring to it as Road to Las Vegas.  This is not to dismiss the workmanship of the quilts that were displayed.  The technical skill and stitch quality of the top prize-winning quilts cannot be disputed.  What can be disputed is whether I liked it, or the ladies next to me liked it, or if  using a million crystals (Swarovski or not) or ten miles of embroidery thread enhances a quilt or if I found the quilt show interesting, or inspirational, or motivational (as in: I want to make that quilt!).  Enough yakking.  Here goes.

The title of this is the Magical Mermaids Castle, [sic] by Claudia Pfeil from Germany.  The workmanship is exquisite, with quilting no more than 1/4″ apart, and embellished to within an inch of its life with those aforementioned 40,000 crystals.  Shimmer.  Shine.  Sparkle.

She obviously has spent a long time on this.

I turned off the flash so the quilting lines would stand out, so sorry that it’s blurry.  When I walked through with Cindy, from Live a Colorful Life (more on our meeting up, later), she had tried some of the crystal work and noted that it must have taken this quilter “hours and hours.”

The back.

Back, detail.  Obviously this quilt is about what you can do with a longarm, what you can do with embellishment.  I finally heard a term that described what these types of quilts are: “show quilts.”  That term came from a quilter, shown below, who was standing beside her quilt, talking about it, and she said she tried to make at least two “show quilts” a year.

It was hanging on a side aisle, the shot angle is a bit skewed (sorry).  The title is Witches Brew [sic] and it is a clever quilt, made by Cathy Wiggins from Macon, North Carolina.  In the accompanying sign, she tells the story of her quilt, plus adds “There is [sic] over 250 hours of hand-embroidery on the scroll.”  I liked how the scroll was like a hand-written recipe, with things crossed out and changed.

NOTE: I keep writing [sic], which means “this is how I found it in the original source.”  I don’t know whether it was the quilter, or the people who printed the signs, but there were lots and lots of typographical/grammar errors everywhere.

Witches Brew, detail

William and Tony’s Magical World is pieced and quilted by their mother, Kristen Vierra and it also shimmers and shines.

Magical World, detail

The Director’s Choice blue ribbon went to Sherrie Reynolds of Laramie Wyoming for her quilt America, Let It Shine.  An absolutely stunner of a quilt, I had her pose by it–she was there a lot, standing by her quilt like a proud Mama (and she should have been proud–it was beautiful).

This is the only shot I could get of the quilt without someone beside/in front of it.  It’s a simpler design in some ways, with a central medallion and detailed borders, but she also used embellishment extensively, as well as a tremendous amount of quilting.

Back of the quilt, held up by the white-gloved hostess.  This shows you the amount of quilting that was on it.

Border detail

Detail, word strip.  The sign reads “5121 Swarovski Crystals represent the words of the Constitution, Star Spangled Banner, Pledge of Allegiance and the age of America. The 13 colonies are represented by using 13 points on outer blue rays and red triangles. The 50 states are represented with the ring of 50 stars.”  And my favorite words of all; “free motion quilted on a Bernina 1001,” or a home-sewing machine.  So, no long-arm, but as you can see, she has a lot of skill in her FMQ.

I remember reading that this got high honors in Houston and it got high honors here as well.  It is heavily (and I mean HEAVILY) quilted with gilt and regular threads, with lots of embellishment.  I should point out that the award winners are at the front of the exhibition hall all in a row, with signs by each one, as they are in other shows.  So, I’m showing them in a cluster as well.

Detail, lower left corner

Backside of lower left corner, showing that there is more thread than fabric showing here.

Detail of the cherry blossoms–all done with thread.  So essentially this is a three-ply thread painting.  Whether or not you like it depends on your own sensibilities, but there is certainly a LOT of work in this quilt.  The title is Harmony Within, and it’s a tribute to marriage by Sue McCarty from Roy, Utah.  Below is another thread design, based on a photograph.

This is a depiction of a potter from the Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, as was her mother before her, and it titled Grace. It’s made by Jennifer Day, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who printed the enlarged photograph on fabric and then went to town, quilting it and covering the face and hands with thread, using sixty-six colors and one-and-one-half miles of thread total.

Detail.  They put tape across each section of the display so it’s hard to get a full-on quality shot, but I think you can see how densely she “painted” with thread.  It’s remarkable how she was able to shade and color the face with all those threads.

Yes, those women really are striding into the scene of helping to put up a quilt show, somewhere in Australia.  She created the figures separately and they are attached to some black tulle netting for support.  Clever, I thought.  Titled Color Comes to the Back of Beyond, it was based on a painting by Pauline McPharlaine.  The makers are Pam Holland, Jan Munzberg, Pauline McPharlaine, and Jeanette Coombs (all from Aldgate, Australia) and was quilted by Pam Holland, the true heroine, for making the quilting integral to the quilt.  I stood at found detail after detail, in this not-so-large quilt.

At first I thought those were dropped glass-headed pins, but they were in other places in the quilt as well, so I decided they must be itty-bitty flowers.  Do you like thread-painted quilts?  The jury is still out for me, but I did like this one.  What you can’t see very well is the texture of this quilt–it really has a lovely quality to it that makes you want to touch it (I didn’t!).

Two more Big Fancy Quilts, then more in the next post.

Deruta, by Suzanne Marshall of Clayton, Missouri. She notes that Deruta is a town in Italy well-known for its hand-painted pottery (yep–I’ve been there!), and that her quilt was inspired by some plates she has with beasts on them.

What’s hard to see about this in the photographs is that she apparently has couched a thicker thread all along the edges of her applique pieces, giving them a harder edge.  Quite remarkable technique and skill.

Calling all you hexie lovers!!  Cheryl See of Ashburn Virginia has made a quilt for you to emulate!  Titled Star Struck, it has 12, 256 hand-pieced hexagons in this quilt. It was stunning, as you can see.  Here are some detailed photos (below):

What’s interesting also is how she used the printed fabric hexies to blend and smooth to the solid-fabric hexagons, which act as borders and as outlines.  And guess what?  No sparkles anywhere!  You CAN make a quilt without quilting it to death or turning it into a Las Vegas Showgirl! More, next time.

Road to California 2012–Preamble

Yessirree! Road to California welcomes you–with a typo.  (Maybe only English teacher types would notice?  Certainly the lady I showed at the official booth had no idea what was wrong with the sign, and I have to admit it’s the first time I’d seen a verb with an apostrophe).

My friend Leisa picked me up early, and we were there in the show by 9:40 (we had to wait for the end of the line to arrive so we could get in after them).  After going to this show for umpteen years, we’ve seen a lot of changes and have perfected our plans.  I always head to the quilt show first, and she likes to give the booths a once-over before doing that.  Really the best time to see the quilts in the show is around 4-6 p.m., when all the busloads of shoppers have gone home and it’s cleared out, but I didn’t know if I would last that long.

I don’t like to show too many quilts until the event is over, so watch for upcoming posts, if you’re interested.  But I will show you some of the things I bought–surely there’s no harm in that.

Flying Geese ruler, Kaffe’s latest violets (in multiple colorways), print fabric, notecard, a set of leather handles for a tote bag and a pattern.  When I told my mother that I could fit everything I bought into my one tote, she said “You must not have been feeling well.”  I was a little under the weather due to complications with the recent surgery, and I felt shopping was like trying to eat dessert after a Thanksgiving feast–you want it, but your heart’s just not in it.  No one had the typewriter fabric I was hoping to find.  Bummer.  And I avoided too-crowded booths (gimp girl, here).  I loved seeing all the quilts that the vendors had decorated their booths with.  Hold onto that thought because I’m coming back to it in my wrap-up at the end.

We had a great day, yummy lunch (box lunches from California Pizza Kitchen) and saw lots of interesting things, but by 3:00 I was ready to go.  So we hopped in the car for the ride home.  Many thanks to Leisa for taking me there!

Pins and Needles

I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I had to look up my entries on Road’s entry page to see what was going on, and this was AFTER they’d extended the deadline by 10 days because their entry page had a technological malfunction.  Or something.

So, no news, but at least my status has been changed to “jurying.”  At least it’s not (yet) “forget it,” or “never happen” or “better luck next time.”

Road to California 2011–part II

Okay–I admit it.  I’ve done this a lot of times.

The first year it was held in the Marriott hotel, and the quilts were everywhere–in the central courtyard with many of the vendors in classrooms–a mess.  Then the Ontario Convention Center was finished and at some point we moved over there.  I have the 2009 bar. Somewhere.  2010 (the 15th anniversary) is still in its baggie, as is this year’s–if I can find it.

So, that impacts how I look at the quilts, what I’m interested in photographing.  So, if I’ve excluded your favorite, I’m sorry.  In this quilt show I have seen a migration from the more mainstream quilts (the kind that you and I make) to more and more elaborate quilts.  A natural progression, I suppose, but I have known of some quilts (that I thought were worthy) that didn’t get in.  And so the kinds of quilts that you and I make, seem to be in a different sphere than many of these.  I have found a lot of those types of quilts in the vendors’ booths, which is another reason to haunt them.

I enjoyed seeing the “travel” quilts.

These are the quilts taken from photographs of faraway places.  This was begun in a faraway place as well–in Esterita Austin’s class at a 13th-century villa in Tuscany, Italy.  Patricia Masterson was the piecer and the maker, and the title is Reminiscence of Tuscany.

I’m a complete fan of these group quilts, where everyone is given a strip of the photo, and encouraged to make it in what ever style or technique they wished. Then the quilter finishes it off.  The makers of this quilt, titled Annency, France, are “The Extreme Quilters Group”  from Simi Valley  and the quilter was Sue Rasmussen.

Detail.

Of course we all know where this is located.  History and Tradition was made and quilted by Judith Eselius from Oregon. (I don’t remember the canals being that blue, but I like that color when used in this composition.)

Detail of the quilting.

Incommunicato, by Esteria Austin (recognize that name?  from the quilt above?)  She writes: “Every September it is my privilege to lead a workshop and tour in Tuscany.  One year, after lunch, I snapped a photo of two participants caught in this wonderful pose.”  How many times has my husband been checking out our photos of the day, while I re-applied my lipstick?  Many.

And of course, this glowing sunset of a photo, from yesterday’s post.

Road to California-2011 (part I)

Road to California, our local quilt show, is being held this weekend in Ontario, California.  My friend Leisa and I had pre-purchased our arm bands, and joined the other eight billion middle-aged women in line.  Some of these women had brought their husbands.  One woman described another’s husband as “the runner,” and I suppose that meant he ran packages to the car.  Then her friend suggested that the husband had also come to keep an eye on his wife’s purchases.  Which made the first woman laugh.  That’s Leisa and I posing in front of one of the giant barn decorations in an exhibit in the hallway.

This duality–of going to see a display of first-rate quilts and shopping the over 200 vendors–is what makes a quilt show so much fun, as witnessed by this man’s T-shirt:

He said if he’d had a dollar for everyone who took a picture of him, he wouldn’t be broke anymore.

I read somewhere that the average age of a woman who quilts is 55.  This crowd proved it.  But I’d have to say there were a LOT of older women who were in scooters, with walkers, and in wheelchairs.  An interesting cross-section of the aging quilt population.  We’d better get some newer, younger quilters in here pronto.  The doors opened and Leisa and I crossed through the front doors, figured out a time to meet, then waved good-bye to each other.  She likes to look in the vendor’s booths, but I always hit the quilt show first.

I like to look at the wearable art, because I follow the blog of someone who enters her garments in these shows: Summerset Banks.  She’d entered a garment titled “Spring’s First Blush,” inspired by her friend Ann, a cancer survivor.  This outfit features “free motion quilting, Prismacolor pencil colors and hand beading.”

The top, showing her second place ribbon.

The skirt, with its exquisite details.  Congratulations, Summerset!

Jo P. Griffith’s quilt, Last Harvest, was part of the special exhibit Fall, The Noble Seasons Series.  She also curated the exhibit, and it was filled with quilters’ percpetions of fall.

Gone A’ Maizin, by Rose Hughes

Grandma with an ax in Minnesota in the Fall, by Joanell Connolly.  She wrote: “I work with vintage photos of women from the 1930′s that speak to me.  Grandma just sings–fall.”  The women next to me who were looking at this kept wondering why the ax?  I don’t think there’s any good reason–just a funny photograph.

 

Mia Bloom made Autumn Glow.

The Hoffman 2010 Challenge was a sea of turquoise, quite striking.  Their 2011 Challenge Fabric looks like a re-do from something I saw in the 1990s, but I’m being snarky (um, I didn’t like it then and I still don’t like it).  I’m sure glorious things will come from it, though, as they always do.

One of the grand award winners was Natural Wonders, by Kathy McNeil (she also quilted the quilt).  Detail below.

Port of Cassis, by Lenore Crawford.  She used a fusing/fabric painting technique to depict this ancient port on the French Mediterrean Sea.  This scene just glows–it was a lovely quilt.  Details below.

I was taking this photo and some lady came up and said, “I have that fabric.”  I laughed because I have it too.  But when I said that neither she nor I probably do anything like this with our fabrics, she agreed.

“Get Maynard’s rear end,” said one friend to another.  I took a picture of it too–a snow scene titled Maynard, made and quilted by David M. Taylor.

*

And this one got the award for most humorous.  Really?  I thought it was a bit of a mess, although I’m sure the maker was pleased.  It will remain nameless, in case the owner does a search on his or her name.

So I don’t leave you on a downer, here’s a stunner of a quilt, all raw-edge appliqued.

Ruffled Feathers, made and quilted by Roxanne Nelson from Calgary Canada.  She fell in love with a photograph of this parrot, and she used only fabric “as the medium to build layers of color blends.”  I was frustrated that I couldn’t get closer to look at, but hoped I could look at by using the telephoto on my camera.  It was a really lovely quilt.

Detail of above.

More, later.

Road to California 2010

This was my tenth appearance at the Road to California Quilt Show, held in Ontario California. I have entered in the past, but haven’t since grad school, lacking either the time or the interest.

But there’s also this nagging suspicion that my quilts may not measure up, given the direction that quilting seems to be going. So when I come to the show, I come with a critical eye, trying to identify trends. Or fads (such as crystals).

One trend is in the quilting. Not just the single line of thread tracing around a patch or creating a feather, but Quilting As The Star.

This quilt typifies that, with its narrowly spaced lines of thread (don’t even get me started on why we quilters need to use certain types of thread), decorative jewels, sequins, crystals adding to the main pieced design. There are quilted flames shooting off the appliqued fabric flames, and tightly scrolled quilting suppressing certain areas of the quilt in order to create a sort of trapunto effect. The whole quilt is layer upon layer on texture, color, design.

Fire and Ice, by Claudia Pfeil of Krefeld, Germany

While I think the above quilt is beautiful, I think this trend has gotten out of hand. In the early 1990s I entered a large bed-sized quilt (quilts are not identified anymore as “bed quilts,” that idea having faded as it seems the main thrust of quilting now is about art, design and its decorative function); this quilt was evaluated by a team of three judges as it was a juried show. No noticeable faults with my piecing or design, but one judge scrawled, “Not enough quilting.”

I think that was the year that two quilts were exhibited at the back of the hall, covered in heavily quilted design and crystals for accent. Multi-colored threads outlined feathers, swirls, circles, and a dragon (if I remember correctly). We were in awe. We all had a crush on this new boy in town.

Now the heavily quilted are at the front of the hall, strutting their stuff and this influence has had some unfortunate effects, I think. Case in point is the quilt below.

In this first picture, the appliqued vases and flowers of baskets have the full stage, but upon closer inspection. . .

. . . the quilting obscures the images, even competing for attention. I found this to be sad, as the handiwork done by the quilter was beautiful and precise, but the quilt was marred by the quilting–lots of quilting–in between each petal and flower. I think a simple gridded design in the background would have served the quilt much better.

This quilt gets the balance correct. Suzanne Marshall writes that her “quilt is adapted from a 17th century Norwegian tapestry that depicts the Legend of Guimar, the knight who shot a deer but whose arrow returned to injure the hunter.” The entire quilt is show below.

The Legend of Guimar, by Suzanne Marshall of Clayton, Missouri

Every quilt show has its Ugly Quilt and I found this year’s. It was in a group exhibit (otherwise I’m sure it would not have gotten in). Nearly every element has gone awry–from the choice of color and the applique technique to the quilting, which again, is too much, much too much, obscuring what little there might have been to redeem this sad quilt. I admit I have a few pieces which might qualify for this honor–all quilters do.

Even though this one has won top awards, I think it also qualifies in my book as one of the candidates for the Ugly Quilt.

The quilting really works in this quilt, and it is used to bring out the texture of the turtle and the motion of the water. The quilting complements what is going on in the design, instead of competing or obscuring it.

Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, by Cheryl Spalding of Portland, Oregon
Quilted by Karen Saltzberg

Another idea I follow is design, and try to apply the basics of good design: does what the quilter intended come forward in his or her use of basic composition, inventiveness? Do the colors and the tonalities balance, in other words, is it harmonious? Does it add something to the quilt conversation, or is it merely echoing what has gone on before? I must add that I tend to be in the latter group of followers, often repeating what I’ve seen before. (Someday, I always say, I’ll think of the next 10% new idea. . .)

Here are some that caught my (untrained) eye.

Puppies, a la Andy Warhol

Pup Art, by Nancy S. Brown of Oakland, California

Christmas Chickadee, by David M. Taylor of Steamboat Springs, Colorado
The inclusion of the Christmas tree light elevates it from a simple nature scene into a conversation.

A Summer Parade, by Joanell Connolly of Huntington Beach, California

The Moment of Inspiration, by Sandy Curran of Newport News, Virginia
Hitchcock keeping an eye on these birds was what pulled me in, but I also liked the reference to the film by the inclusion of “sprocket holes” on the side of the quilt.

Memories of Monet, by Joen Wolfrom
Joen Wolfrom’s quilt works well on so many levels. It’s the first I’ve seen of hers in many years. She’d stopped quilting for a while when her hand was injured in a dog attack.

Colors Unfurled, aka, If Betsy Ross Had My Stash, by Maria C. Shell of Anchorage, Alaska
Great use of quilting blocks and traditional motifs to create a flag. Depictions of the flag in red, white and blue are found a lot at quilt shows (we’re a patriotic bunch, I guess) but this one, with its brights and bolds was a real stunner. It’s huge, probably 9 feet long by 5 feet tall.

Love the paper doll blocks, swimming fish, flags–this quilt has everything!

A crazy-quilt version of the flag. This is a new idea as well, as most depictions are traditionally pieced.

Betsy Ross Never Imagined This, by Nancy McLerran of Santa Rosa, California

Play Dead (Guns Kill Children), by Janice Pennington of San Diego, California
Quilted by Laurie Daniells
Nostalgic fabrics, reproductions of designs from earlier days, are used in a quilt that makes a statement against handgun violence.

Enjoy these for now. I’ll try to get a few more posted later.