Quilt Show!

This weekend I went off with my Greenwood Public Library quilting team to a local quilt show in Rock Creek, courtesy of the Rumplestiltskein guild.  I don't actually belong to the guild, except in a sort of a way, in that I came in to pinch hit (pinch quilt?) on the Midway Museum triptych you saw me wrestling with a few months ago (I talk about it here and here).  I never did show you the finished piece, even when I had it back again in order to add binding and a sleeve last month.  So here you go, here it is hanging at the show.  Judy H. did a wonderful job of sewing the three panels together, and how she matched up all our skylines and roofline angles and bits of fence and window I can't imagine.  Hats off to her, I say.

The pegboard doesn't really do it justice but no matter:  it will soon hang in the museum, on permanent display.  I feel that my centre panel is in good company flanked by Judy and Loretta's work.

It was terrific finally to see the other three triptychs.  All four depicted landscape features well known to residents of the West Boundary.  In order as they appear below, the other three subjects are sunset over Mount Baldy (our local ski hill), the yellow house on the Anarchist (I showed you a photo of this abandoned house last month), and the railway bridge over the Kettle River inside Kettle River provincial park.

It was astonishing to see how many art quilt techniques people had used in their panels:  I was definitely in the minority using little more than fused appliqué and a bit of organza.  In hers, for example, Louise used sheers to good effect in her right-hand panel of the yellow house piece to suggest the halo of branches surrounding the crown of cottonwoods in winter.  And you can perhaps see the couched yarn in the bridge triptych in both the centre and right-hand panels of the bridge piece, indicating foliage and adding a lot of texture to the quilt (the rosette isn't part of the quilt:  it's a prize ribbon for a CQA award).  Here's a closeup so you can see the details:

But look at this list of techniques used in the Mount Baldy piece!  People are amazing.

My group of six happily wandered through the show.  I'm perhaps the least diligent about really LOOKING at the quilts, getting right up close and investigating stitching for instance.  But I do enjoy the collective critique we engage in as we wander, evaluating patterns and colour choices and value contrasts and so on.  We're always on the lookout for a good pattern for next year's library raffle quilt too.  Here are a few quilts that appealed to me.  The two below were made by Judy H.  I love the blue one for its ingenious strip-pieced curves and for the impression of a wave that they create.  And the one below it is a pattern called Pine Burr that I've had in my maybe-one-day file for a long time.  The scrappy richness of Judy's fabrics is part of the charm for me, and I'm developing a taste for a feathered shape like these four-pointed stars as well.  In fact, hmm, there's been talk among the library quilters about choosing a feathered design for next year's quilt.  What do you think?  Would it be a good contender for a raffle quilt?  In her notes, Judy mentions that she ran out of the grey background fabric and therefore had to redraft the design to create a background "border."  I think this change is brilliant and makes an already appealing quilt even better.

I loved this cello, made by Diana from a pattern whose name I didn't note:  sorry!  I love the crazily patterned batiks on the cello and how the background supports them.  Diana told me the name of the designer of this fabric, which I promptly forgot.  Sorry again.

 

Here as elsewhere, wool felt is making a strong showing in appliqué work, and two examples caught my eye because I'm always drawn to the brights.  Other examples in earthier, more retiring tones were just as effective, but I didn't think to take pictures of them.  The sheer mad exuberance of this piece made me smile.  And doesn't the wool brilliantly showcase the texture of the quilting?

This one also made me grin because of the madcap whimsy of these birds.  And look at the texture in the closeup!  The birds seem to be about to fly off the surface of the quilt.  Someone (whose name, alas, I forgot to note) did a marvellous job of an awful lot of hand-stitching.

Also in the category of madly inventive was this jacket, entirely pieced of selvedges.  My pal Myrna told me that she recognized this pattern (she's a selvedge collector, so she knows about these things).  She asked me if I'd ever wear it were it mine, and I replied that I'd be afraid to in case something dreadful happened to it.  Imagine a spilled cup of coffee or a misdirected squirt of ketchup.  Again, sorry, no idea who made this piece. 

I enjoyed this glorious burst of woolly colour:  someone had set up a frame and was demonstrating the beginnings of a hooked rug.  What a cleverly simple design, those zigzags, and so accommodating to a wild assortment of colours!

And this was worth a giggle:  Judy F. discovered that her bag was also a quilt.  She demonstrated that she'd used the same fabrics in her bag that someone else had used in a quilt.  I thought we should hang the bag over the quilt and see whether anyone noticed.  We didn't do it, however.

In between bouts of touring the quilt show, we (of course) visited the merchant mall.  As is usual for a tiny show like this one, in a rural area, the number of vendors was small:  just three.  And all three were primarily selling batiks.  I don't use batiks much and I already have quite a collection in my studio, but I felt that the vendors, all of whom had travelled quite a distance to the show, deserved our support.  So now I have more batiks than I did before the weekend.  With batiks the fabrics are so beautiful in and of themselves that one finds oneself caressing and claiming them with no earthly idea of what they might eventually be used for.  Here are half the Greenwood gang hard at work assessing opportunities to part with their cash.  That bin of fat quarters was a favourite for all of us:  I found myself diving back into it several times.   Cherry Tree Quilts from Summerland were the vendors here.

How can a person resist such an array of colour and texture?  I didn't even notice those Denyse Schmidt solids in the upper right hand corner:  it's probably just as well, but oh dear me, how I'd love to have them.

I did, in a heroic effort of self-control, manage to leave behind all of these five-fabric bundles

Timmy-Jeane, whom I know from years of art quilt workshops in Grand Forks, had set up her batik fat quarters in lovely drawers from her antique sewing machine table.

The third vendor was (I think:  someone correct me if I'm wrong) Batik Korner from Oyama (just north of Kelowna), and the proprietor had draped one of her tables with this simple but effective scrap quilt.  She described this as a great way to use up batik scraps.

In the past I have almost always been the biggest spender amongst the Greenwood library quilters when we're all together at a merchant mall or a quilt shop.  Yesterday, however, one of us left me completely in the dust, making the momentous and exciting decision to purchase a Sweet 16 Handi-Quilter, a big step up from the home sewing machines we use to quilt our own quilts but still a much more manageable size than a long-arm machine.  We're all thrilled for her and looking forward to the moment when she feels confident enough to invite us over for a demo.  Of the six of us, she is the only one who's really taken to machine quilting, so I'm glad that she's followed her heart.  The folks at Cherry Hill Quilts, from whom she bought it, followed her back to her home to set up the machine for her, which I thought was excellent service.  I hope she has a great time with her new machine.

So all in all it was a happy day.  Looking at a quilt show with friends is a whole lot more fun (and often leads to more insights and observation) than touring through the quilts on one's own.   I got to see my own quilts hanging amongst the others.  Unfortunately, the organizers of the show received a huge number of quilts (216 was the number I heard) and the exhibition hall at the Rock Creek fairgrounds isn't a big space, so some quilts (a couple of mine included) had to be folded.  Oh well.  Here you can see my Library Leftovers quilt, at an extremely oblique angle on the left, and my ZigZag quilt, which was one of those that had to be folded.

But it was nice to think that my quilts were getting a bit of fresh air and a new setting and some new spectators.  Except for the ones we use as bed quilts, these poor things spend most of their lives rolled up and stuck under a table in the studio.  They deserve the chance to preen, don't you think?

No animal photographs for you this week (sorry, Dad), even though I had more contact with the horses than usual since I was responsible for their feeding and watering for four days.  My dear husband was down on the coast taking a couple of painting workshops with Ingrid Christensen.  He got home at bedtime last night, exhausted but full of new information and with a bevy of practice paintings.  So we both had an exciting, art-filled weekend.  I hope yours was a boon to you, as well.

Related articles

A Finished Quilt!

Spring Cleaning, Interrupted

Comments

[Jeremy Wilkins]

WOW! What an amazing and beautiful show! I wish i could have been there. Such a rich experience. As always, thank you for your blog, Anne.

PS. i was going to mention the "guitar" but found it had already been changed to "cello".

Jeremy

[Anne at Shintangle Studio]

Hi Jeremy:

Thanks for your appreciative comment! I dearly love to get a comment, particularly one as enthusiastic as yours. Of course a musical person like you would have immediately spotted my "guitar" error: it occurred because I was viewing that cello quilt with someone who was contemplating making a guitar quilt by the same designer. It took my dear husband's eye to spot the error (and a few others). And I'm sure the show organizers and participants would be glad to know you were impressed even by the tiny selection of quilts I photographed: I'll pass that along.

[Jeremy Wilkins]

I also meant to add my comment about the Chroma Code quilt....it is powerful when horizontal as bed quilt and equally so in a very different way when vertical. Both would catch my eye.

Jeremy

[Anne at Shintangle Studio]

Thanks, Jeremy. I can't decide which orientation of Chroma Code I prefer. But it wouldn't make much of a bed quilt for anyone over the age of two, since it's only about 40 inches longwise. A couple of people who saw it first on the blog and then in person on the weekend were surprised at how small it is: I guess I didn't do a very good job of suggesting scale in the photographs. But those comments and yours have given me the idea that this quilt is worth making again in a much larger version.

[Diane]

Anne, I recently discovered your comments on my blog and I've been having the BEST time exploring yours! I'm glad your friend "introduced" us to each other and I look forward to following your blog! It looks like you had a grand time at the quilt show! Diane

[Anne at Shintangle Studio]

Hi Diane:

I'm really glad that we've connected. And I'm glad to see that you're back to blogging yourself: I've got you bookmarked. Still loving those flying geese quilts . . .