Pacific International Quilt Festival

We enjoy going to quilt shows to see what other people do. Our most recent adventure took us to the Pacific International Quilt Festival in Santa Clara. It’s an uneven show–some years the show is really good, other years, well, not so much. This was not the best year. Having said that there were some really stunning quilts and some quilts with really interesting quilting.
For me there were a few quilts that caught my eye from a distance, and I was pulled in to look at them closer. Christine Seager’s Bush Fire was the first one. Very simple quilting, but what a wonderful composition. I’m not sure that I saw trees before I read the title, but afterward I could see nothing but fire and trees.

Another stunner was Kimberly Lacy’s Fire in the Stone. It really captured the essence of the rock formations in the southwest desert. I wasn’t disappointed when I stepped in for a closer look.

The third quilt that I kept coming back to was Evelyn Wickham’s Jazz for the Mid-century Modern exhibit. I loved the combination of colors and shapes, the repetition of those shapes, and it truly had that mid-century modern feel. I’m sorry she didn’t win a prize. She would have been my first choice.

Then there were the quilts with quilting that spoke to me. Another one of the Mid-century modern quilts, Bev Bird’s White Spaces was one. The artist stated she was inspired by André Courrèges. If you’re not familiar with the name, Google him. If you’re my age, you’ll certainly be familiar with his fashions. I love it when something in a statement leads me to investigate further. After looking up Courrèges, I can’t say I see the connection between Courrèges’ iconical work (not that I’ve seen much of it) and Bird’s, but it does read mid-century. I love the quilting lines! Kris and I use a lot of straight-ish (we call them organic) lines in our text quilts. But Bird takes the lines one step further. She varies the direction, and sometimes the lines intersect. It makes for wonderful texture in the quilt.

Another piece where the quilting lines really made the quilt was Letitia Chung’s Whimsical Logs. Without the quilting, this quilt would have just been another modern take on the traditional log cabin design. It’s the stitching lines that really give this quilt its pizazz!

The next three quilts caught my eye with their circular details. The texture in Jody Robinson’s Keep It Simple was hard not to touch. The pattern of quilted dots turned this simple quilt in to something worthy of its blue ribbon.

Jan Hutchison’s Sunflower Deco, was a visual feast. Lots of stitching and trapunto. But what really caught my attention was the stitching of the stripes at the bottom of the quilt. A simple but effective use of straight lines.

Last, but not least, is Beth Shillig’s Wandering ‘Round My World. You may have seen this quilt in magazines and on other blogs. But in person, it’s just amazing. The quilting, the construction, and the composition make it worthy of its first place ribbon in the innovative category.

I’ll never do the intricate quilting that Beth and some of the other quilters do, but it’s sure fun to see the stitches in person.