Sure, we quilt. Sure, we like to meet up with friends. In the end, though, we go to quilt shows to get inspired. We usually go to the Pacific International Quilt Festival in Santa Clara every year, but the past few years have not been very inspiring. It seems the quilts got dark and brooding (not necessarily a bad thing) and coincided with the recession. This year seemed to be a good year.
I, Deb, am going to start out. I’ll let Kris chime in later. I have to say, I’m not really interested in which quilts win prizes. Some quilts just speak to me. And mostly they just speak to me and not the judges. Here’s one of my favorites:
Modern Urbanscape
I love the movement, the use of straight and curved lines and most of all the color combinations. I wish I were so daring. Who would think to put these colors in the same quilt?
Next I was looking at quilting. Since we are working on a quilt about water, I was interested in simple quilting that evoked water:
These three were interesting to me. The purple part of “Skyfire Shadows at the Monuments” looks like rippling water. You know, the shallow water running over rocks. The yellow part of “Symphony in the Sea” would be very effective, too. A more elaborate design like the pebbles and curvy lines in “Cracking the Code” might work, too.
Then there were just some nice examples of more elaborate machine stitches. Wendy Hill had several samples I really liked that just require you to add a zigzag stitch:
Paula Jolly’s “Instinctually Stitched” used a wide variety of machine stitches. It really made the quilt sing:
Hand quilting with tiny stitches is not my idea of fun, but look at Andrea Stacke’s wholecloth quilt:
My last two photos are just eye candy. These dimensional beetles (or bead-les, as Kris called them) were magnificent.
The text quilts that Kris and I make don’t lend themselves to ornate quilting lines, but I love looking at interesting stitching.
And here is Kris chiming in: Yeah, what Deb said. And I just want to add this quilt because it made me smile:
