Quilt Festival 2009

"Twist & Shout" by Diane Siminacek of Bellaire, Michigan

The Quilt Festival in Rosemont took place about a month ago, but I'm just catching up since then. The Festival was great, but several exhibits were "no photography allowed" this year, which was very disappointing. I don't know what the big deal is with photos, I would be honored if someone thought enough of my quilts to take a picture to remember and be inspired by at a later date.

The "Sky's the limit" contest entrants were fantastic, but I can't show them to you since photos weren't allowed. They have a few of them on the Quilts website. And they are just in time for the new Star Trek movie! I admit it, I really want to see it on the IMAX, but there will be absolutely no uniform wearing involved.

As usual, there were several Japanese quilters that just blew me away! Seriously, I just don't know how these amazing women complete these quilts in a lifetime! They were huge, probably at least king size. Most were hand appliques and hand quilted too.

Here are a few of my favorites from the show that I was able to photograph:

"Breath of Life" by Harumi Asada
Chitagun Aichi, Japan

"Spring in Japan" by Akiko Kawata

Osaka, Japan

"Red Owls" by Karin Peirce
Belmont, Maine

And my absolute favorite from the entire show:

"A Midsummer Night's Garden" by Jan Hutchinson
Sedgewick, Kansas

The applique and embroidery are gorgeous, but the quilting absolutely makes this quilt!! The trapunto'd (sp?) fairy, butterflies, bees, dragonflies, snails and flowers are just incredible!!! And she used my favorite batik as the background.

For those not versed in quilting terminology, Trapunto is when you quilt a design with a poofy batting behind it. Then you cut away the extra on the outside of the image you quilted, layer the quilt top with the normal batting and backing, then requilt over the trapuntoed(sp?) image. The if you quilt closely together around the image, it poofs out like the images in this stunning quilt.

I have to go feed the zoo now, as they are becoming quite vocal about the fact that it's 5 minutes past their dinner time.