Quilt Festival

I attended the opening ceremonies of the Waterloo County International Quilt Festival and arrived too late to get in on any of the appetizers and treats! The doors opened at 6:45 pm and by the time I arrived at 7:15 pm, only honeydew melon remained! But I was there in plenty of time for the handing out of the awards for the Ontario Juried Show. I wish more recipients would have been there to receive their awards, but now that the competition is open to entries from across Canada, I'm guessing there will be less award winning quilters able to attend. After the ceremony, we viewed the quilts which is always fun for me. I like to see how my opinions gel with the judges (or not!). I appreciate that this show uses different judges every year and you never know who they are until the opening ceremonies.
If you get a chance to see these quilts at RIM, see if you can tell which OJS quilt was my favorite. Here is a big clue....it is a bed size quilt made of 1" squares...yes...the whole thing was 1" squares! And the machine quilting was exquisitely done and perfect for the theme of the quilt. It was a lovely quilt from far away, but up close it takes my breath away! When the award winning quilt photos are posted on line, I'll post the link to my favorite. You can see the winning quilts from other years here....scroll to the bottom of the page for each years winners. Click here to see the winning quilts from 2004 which was the year that I was a juror and judge for this show. It was a very exciting, rewarding and exhausting experience.
Similar to opening night this year!
I was initially very excited to be in my first invitational quilt show called "Glitz Embellished Pieces" but on opening night, I must say that it was intimidating for me. Again most of the artists were not in attendance at the opening ceremonies since they are not from this area (or the province). Here is a photo of me beside my miniature embellished quilts. They do seem a bit lost in that huge arena full of bed size masterpieces, however I do take some pride in the fact that my quilts were the smallest ones in all of RIM park!

Goddess of the Last Minute - Quilt #3

As I wrote in previous posts, I had to pick 3 quilts to be in a quilt show in May. I already wrote about quilt#1 and quilt#2. And here is quilt #3, called "Infinity". It started with a piece of hand painted fabric (I use Setacolor paints) and a box of beads. My son and I like to watch the olympics together on TV but I get bored after about 10 minutes if I don't have handwork to do. So this is what I like to do to keep my creative mind busy while I watch TV.

This quilt is 10 1/2" x 6 1/2".

I have been taking a break from doing this kind of hand work until my thumb nail heals up. Thanks to those of you who emailed me with suggestions on promoting faster healing. I think we all agree that doing the dishes (and any other houshold chore requiring hands in water) is not a good thing, so I am taking a break from that!

I have been working on my samples for the Quilt University class I am taking on "Points and Curves". These are the practice pieces I have made so far. Although these techniques were not new to me, I have been challenging myself to draft the patterns on EQ (Electric Quilt program) and that has not been as much fun as I had hoped! For the next lesson I am going back to the regular old-fashioned method of "paper and pencil" pattern drafting.

Goddess of the Last Minute - Quilt #2

On Thursday I wrote about having to pick three of my quilts to be in a quilt show in May, and I showed you the first choice. This is the beginning of the second chosen quilt...gathering the pattern and the supplies. Members of my guild will recognize the fabrics, as this quilt was made for a guild challenge in which we were given a fat quarter of the green and the blue fabrics on the top of these fabric piles. The theme was "celebration". The photo on the left shows some of the beads and threads I bought for this project, and the 2 1/2" EQ5 (Electric Quilt) paper pieced pattern I used. On the right is the finished piece called "Celebrating Beauty and the Beads". I had a different design layout in mind for this quilt, but it exceeded the measurements of the miniature quilt category so I had to come up with something else. It took me a while to decide to include this piece because I had to contact it's new owner and ask to borrow it back for the show! On the left is a close-up photo of one of the blocks which shows some of the beading. The size of this piece is 7 1/2" across by 11" from top to bottom.
Only one more quilt to choose!

Goddess of the Last Minute!

I know that Robbi Joy Eklow claims to be "Goddess of the Last Minute", but I could give her a run for her money! I was invited many months ago to submit three pieces for the Quilt Festival's "Glitz, Glitz, Glitz Embellished Exhibit" in May. Only three pieces...that's right...3! So I have been fussing around since then about which 3 to pick...older pieces? Newer pieces? Which ones? Quilts from my cupboard? Or should I recall quilts I have given away? Of course my most favorite quilt is usually my most recent one, but it's not finished yet and has decided to not be finished by the deadline, so that one is out.
So, now the coordinator has emailed me to remind me about the deadline for the paperwork. No problem, I say...when is it?? Tomorrow!! Yikes...how did that get here so fast?!?! It's a lot of paperwork...four pages per piece plus the artist's bio...that's 13 pages to write up before tomorrow. Why did I leave this to the last minute?!?!
I asked my sick daughter, who is a captive audience, for a consultation and she easily picked her favorites. We decided this one is in for sure since we both love it! It is called "New Growth: Branching Out" and was made as one of my assignments in Myrna Geisbrecht's Self Expression class at Quilt University. It started with a hand painted fabric that I liked, and I was inspired by the drying lines in the paint to quilt a tree...the funky little "Dr. Suess" flowers evolved, and the tree trunk and branches were darkened with Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons. The quilting is in the style inspired by my friend Judy Taylor, who is a pro at this kind of machine quilting. I tried to bead each flower in a different way. The beading inside the binding is from Mary Stori's Beading Basics book. (Wow...that is alot of links that I just wrote up, but I like to give credit where credit is due! Just click on the coloured words and your computer will take you to their websites.) The size of this piece is 8 1/2" square.
So, that leaves two more quilts to pick. And a pile of paperwork to fill in. Tune in tomorrow night to see the other two quilts that get to go to the Glitz show. If I was more organized, I'd make my decision like "American Idol" does and get my blog readers to vote! Maybe next time!