Otago Gold: Chinese Coins

Another World Quilt Competition. The circles have been appliqued onto diagonally pieced squares. The diagonals cleverly form strips of color that shoot around the quilt. They are strong lines but the circles and the neat center rectangle win the design tug-of-war here. Some of the circles look like they may have had foil applied to them? Foiling quilting may be a just-now-arriving trend. I always love quilts with a circle theme. This one is embellished with Chinese coins.

World Quilt Competition First Prize Winner (I think)

What an amazing quilt. I didn't get a good enough photo of the information or the ribbon to know for sure but I believe this was a first prize winner in the World Quilt Competition!
Since I can't read that I can't read the technique information either. I do know that the black line detail on the Grecian images is stitching. The double gold rings around the medallians are a gold lame fabric and I would say images are appliqued with very narrow machine satin stitch. It is machine quilted.

More Quilts, More Quilts!

	A folded bow tie quilt made from Asian prints. The pattern came from a book by Rebecca Wat The bow tie is one my favorite traditional patterns. Again, this quilt is showing the dimensional element that is gaining momentum.
	The black blocks are not flat filler-type blocks. They are folded like the printed ones
	World Quilt Competition Honoarable Mention winner. Judith Briant, New Zealand

#1003

The quilt maker did not use any paint to create the face in this portrait quilt. A particularly interesting element here is her use of the back of the fabric to create the shading in the shirt. Nor did she use a pair of jeans to create the denim look in the quilt either. The jeans are appliqued shades of blue. Again, an amazing piece, hanging next to the Guatemalan ladies, difficult to get near bacause everyone wanted a closer look!

Blue Ladies of Guatemala

More trends: dimensional elements and ethnic fabrics In this case textiles that the women are holding and many of their headdresses are folded and/or stuffed. The handwoven Guatemalan fabrics gorgeous and once again, an ingenuous use of fabric I've always admired but never knew what I would do with.

This quilt was stunning and surrounded by people as I was trying to take this picture. The photo doesn't really do it's color or texture justice.

Pennsylvania Quilt Extravaganza 2007 is Here

Ok, here we go! It was a great show. Maybe part of the reason the show moved to the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg was so that it could grow bigger? I don't know, but it was too big this year for me to get through in one day. The drive is longer but I must go! First my images of the prize winners.

This was a huge quilt with an irregular shape. Though I have no hard and fast evidence for it I believe that non-square/rectangular shaped quilts are becoming more and more popular. I haven't seen many irregular shapes win prizes.

The quilt combines painted folk images and paper pieced blocks. There are, as the artist points out in her statement, lions quilted in the upper corners. There are also african fabrics, or prints combined to evoke natively produced african prints. The use of ethnic prints, especially ones other than Japanese, is another trend I see more and more of and I do love it. I have quite a collection and these great examples provide ideas.

Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza 2007...

...is coming up beginning on the September 6 and going through the 9th. I'm looking forward to it! Although I really must limit my fabric buying until I use some more of what I have.

Needle Felted Project Details

Details of the front, top and bottom. It still has a bit of an unfinished feel to me but I'm not sure what I would do to finish it.

Another "My Project:" Needle Felting

Here is another project in progress! This started as a vintage wool pullover and in my first and only needle felting class I started, and nearly finished, turning it into an embellished cardigan. The printed fabric that was added is printed cotton bonded to the sweater with wool roving in colors that echo the print.

August Days

It has been a week and a half of vacation and that time has been nearly computer free. I have, as I promised myself, worked on my New York Beauty flower quilt. Pictures here and I get to add the "My Projects" tag to this entry!

I've got about 5 fairly complete rounds and bits and pieces of another, some of which I intend to be single fill-in edge patches. I had originally intended to make this quilt "full-sized," that is about 80 by 80, that would be 10 rounds. I am now considering making it smaller, 5 or six rounds, to fit in the space between the windows in my sewing room, since I really don't have any place to hang a really large quilt and I don't know that is will ever actually be a bed cover. We'll see how long I want to keep paper piecing!

More Butterflies

The arrangement of the bays and the plastic bands that kept viewers back from the art made it impossible to take a full photo but this was a lovely butterfly applique.

Barbara Barrick Mckie

There was a little bit of a butterfly theme at a spot in the show. Here's one by my one of my favorite quilters: Barbara Barrick Mckie. Her work is amazing.

Group Quilt Detail

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Detail of the quilt below that shows the parts, each worked on by a different quilter.

Group Quilt

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Eight-person butterfly group quilt. In the last year I've seen a few of these and I enjoy them every time.

Crazy and Embroidery

Details of the crazy-framed blocks below. The maker embroidered images of Victorian women reading in the block centers and fainter images that could be from particular works of fiction along with authors and titles on the crazy frames. The theme is particulary appealing to me!

Crazy Quilting Framing Embroidery

Another new crazy quilt, blocks or crazy framing for embroidery. This one with sepia-toned themed images.

Detail, The Wise Virgin

 

Log cabin blocks.

The Wise Virgin

A very small, 11 by 18 inch quilt. I think it is photo transfers, embroidery, applique and some log cabin-type piecing.

Detail, Crazy Quilt

Detail of previous post's picture.

Pastel Crazy Quilt

 

This was a small quilt. The sign said about 25 by 68 but it looks "squarer" than that. I'm pretty fastinated by crazy quilts. I've always liked the idea of them more than the reality. The Victorian ones tend to be dark and for all their use of scraps, have a similar feel one to another. In the past few years ones that have distinctive, lighter qualities have begun to show up. This one is all light colors and there is quite a bit of tatted lace included. Summary of the artist's statement: Part of a series of dragonfly quilts, made from vintage kimono panels with stenciling, stamping and beading.

Here They Come: Quilt Odyssey Quilts

This is the amazing 3-D quilt. I don't think I've seen another like it. I've tried to give a sense of the sculptural quality in the photos. It hangs about 4 inches out from the wall and the stars and the hanging pocket areas have depth. That is they are constructed to create valleys or, conversely, to stand away from the wall and make three dimensional shapes. The wonderful thing about this piece is that is it fully constructed, it isn't just a surface that shaped move off of, the piece has a two planes about 4 inches apart that the shapes are engineered between. Interesting and unusual.

Quilt Odyssey in Hershey

The ride over and back was pretty, found great raspberry softserve! The quilt show included the $100,000 Quilt Challenge (updated to remove link since it is no more!) quilts to date and specific Quilt Odyssey entries. There were not as many quilts as I've seen at some other shows but still a good trip and a good show. The quilts were set up so that clear plastic tape made an X cross in the middle of each viewing bay. This prevented visitors from seeing the artist's statment in many cases. If I get really ambitious I'll transcribe some of the statements into this blog when I post the pictures starting tomorrow!

Hershey Show

The Hershey Quilt show is this week! Something to look forward to and lots of new pictures! I think I'm going Thursday.

African Prints, detail

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Detail of the quilt, below, showing an applied piece that looks to be a portion of a motif cut directly from African fabric.

Using African Fabric

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I buy African fabric when ever I see it and can afford it. I suspect other quilters do also but I don't have a lot of ideas about what to do with it. It is characterized by large scale prints and I know I am always reluctant to cut these up because they are so graphic as a single piece of fabric. I like this use. We can see the whole motifs in some places and in others the artist has chosen to fragment the images.

Alphabet Detail: L and M

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Detail of the quilt below.

Alphabets

  

IMG_0023v2 Originally uploaded by LauraMoore

I really love alphabet representations of all sorts: children's books, fonts, monograms and this quilt.

http://www.LibraryThing.com

I heard Abby Blachly, a Librarian from LibraryThing speak on Friday. She gave a great demo of the site, pointing out features I didn't know it had and really got me intersted in it. I've had an account for a year or so and really never did much with it but this weekend I spent time adding more books, looking at the tools, reading group posts and viewing the profiles that have many books in common with me! It was pretty compelling!

Goals

As my birthday month approaches I am becoming vigilant. I've learned that it is a good time to think about change and its progeny: milestones and goals because this is the time of year when it comes to call whether I've planned for it or not. What about:

• At least one entry in this blog per week?
  
• I'd also like to finish my zinnia quilt
• Post more pictures (any pictures?) of my own work even though it isn't good enough, is derivative, isn't finished and so on (!).
  
• Write more posts that are creative and fun. One creative post per month?
  
• Take an art class this year.
  
• Be less stressed.
  

Roses in May

Here are the roses about 10 days ago. When I look at these pictures I can almost smell them. When I owned a house for the first time I planted 5 old-fashioned type roses in the back yard. I don't ever remember them being this beautiful.

Eyes

This may be my new favorite mural.