Three Exhibits At Once

 

It has been quite the month for me as far as exhibits go, I had three quilts simultaneously on display in various places. And I only have gotten to one of them myself.

First, was the quilt, Ocean Effect, that I made for the Bay Area Modern Quilt exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair, "Modern Art Meets Modern Quilt." This is a picture of the exhibit showing off many of the great modern art inspired pieces that we made.

And I even won a first place ribbon! Photo credit for both of these pictures go to one of our members, Erin M.

Secondly, another BAMQ exhibit, this time at the Redwood City Public Library Downtown, right in the children's section. Sixteen quilts representing popular children's books. When I was in there checking out the display, there were several kids and their grown-ups choosing their favorites. It's a great display.

My Wizard of Oz quilt

And then, much much closer to home, the San Lorenzo Valley Quilters put out a call for quilts to be displayed at the Boulder Creek Library. 

Luckily for me, my wonderful DH has gone to the library and shared this selfie with my quilt, Burn Grow Slide that's hanging up. 

It's great to have the opportunity to support libraries by sharing my art.

Others at PIQF

 

I didn't take too many pictures at PIQF, but here a few of them. First up in the New Quilts of Northern California exhibit is "Mixed Box" by Karen Bolan. The transparency effect is so great in this one, achieved by using a jelly roll. The pattern is available here and I think I have just the jelly roll waiting around to be used for something like this.

Next in the same exhibit, "A Traditional Block Revisited" by Susan Dague, quilted by Sue Fox. Why this isn't a picture of the complete quilt I'm not sure, but I hope you get the general idea. I really liked the colors in this one and the super interesting and vibrant composition. It reminded me of my Kitchen Sink Quilt, and yep, she'd also taken a class with Maria Shell.

This is a detail of a quilt that used word fabrics and I think selvedges with phrases on them as a sort of sashing in-between QST blocks. I didn't get the name of the quilt or maker for this one. A very fun idea.

This very excellent use of ombré fabric is "Mobius Meets Ombre" by Helen Klee, quilted by Martine Zaun . It was made with a paper piecing technique taught by Audrey Esarey (Cotton&Bourbon on Instagram). 

I thought the choice to use an ombrê fabric on the border also was just perfect. Great visual impact.

I was happy to see Therese May had a quilt in the NQNC exhibit too. This is a detail of one of her digital sketches that she's had printed on fabric and then made into a quilt, "One Hundred Twenty Cat Faces." It's a very different look, but still instantly recognizable as hers.

I really liked this interesting block, I think it was EPP? Great maximalist colors and patterns in the fabric choices.

Here's "Getting Pickled" by Suzan Lynne Peterson, from an interesting group exhibit, Talk Ten Travels, based on a vintage household magazine from the 1940's, Household & Poetry in Cloth. I loved the vibrant mustard yellow to go with the Coleman's label and the energetic hand-stitching. This one just made me laugh with delight, I guess I was surprised at a perfect giant pickle.

I noticed that there was a whole lot of allover matchstick quilting happening on many of the quilts. It's kind of like the new version of allover stippling. Matchstick quilting gives a flatter surface with a very different texture. It almost becomes like an overlay of a not-so sheer fabric. There were some quilts with even more dense stitching than this quilt. I really like the spacing between groups of close together three lines of stitching on this quilt.

PIQF- My Version

 

Today was the day I was able to go to PIQF with friend Jaye. I was glad to get to visit the SAQA booth where some of the Prism Play show rejects were all displayed together. I thought it was quite fun to see them because these aren't the ones I've seen in the actual traveling quilt exhibit photos. Two of mine are in this first picture. 

This was a lot less quilts than the traveling Prism Play exhibit which has 62 quilts , but still got all around the color wheel pretty completely.

I think really good choices were made by the local SAQA exhibit group and I was happy that two of my quilts got an outing.

It's always good to see any of the Social Justice Sewing Academy completed quilts displayed, they had a whole row of them this year. I was happy to see that there were two quilts that had blocks that I'd embroidered. This block is one that I stitched on way back in 2018.. I wish I'd taken a picture of the whole quilt because it looked so good. Look at that beautiful quilting and the great piecing in the sashing. Gorgeous! 

And here I am cheesing it up in front of my Safe At Home quilt in the New Quilts of Northern California exhibit. Photo credit goes to friend Jaye. I neglected to take a picture of the other quilt I had hanging in the Stretching Art and Tradition exhibit, but it looked pretty good. All in all, a fun visit to PIQF, less quilts than the pre-pandemic normal, no international quilts😞, and a different group of vendors to choose from. Even m ore fun was running into friends from CQFA and BAMQ.

At PIQF This Year

Heads up, at this year's odd summer-time PIQF, I've got four quilts that will be on display at the Santa Clara Convention Center from July 24-27 as part of various exhibits. 

In the New Quilts of Northern California exhibit, be on the look out for my "Safe At Home" quilt.

Over in the SAQA exhibit, we'll be showing off some of the rejects from the now touring Prism Play show, and two (out of three) of mine will be displayed.  It was hard to say yes when they asked, but I did, so I hope you'll have a chance to check them all out.  This one above is named Aqua Centrum.

And this one is named Chartreuse Sinister.

And finally, in one of the special exhibits, Stretching Art & Tradition 24, my quilt 5-4-5-7 will be displayed.

Blue Ribbon Blues

 

Well, well, well. It's quite a strange thing to experience winning a blue ribbon, at anything really, much less at a quilt show. It was only for the category of the quilts that the BAMQ group entered, not overall or anything like that. But, I keep seeing it up on my design wall and getting surprised just at the visual reminder. I also got surprised at the judging sheet, no improvement needed. Not sure I agree with that, but it's nice to hear. This was a rather traditionally made quilt, at least for me. So I guess that I'm glad I was up to snuff on those terms even without a ton of practice. Then I got a little check in the mail, which makes the whole thing somewhat more concrete.

Okay, deep breath. "Hey look, here's my prize-winning quilt!"

Wandering Wednesday: San Mateo County Fair

A couple weekends ago, we made the trek over the hill to the San Mateo County Fair where we met up with some of my Phi Mu sorority sisters, including friend Jaye. I mainly went for the socializing with people I don't get to see often, and to also get to see the BAMQ quilt challenge exhibit. Here it is as seen from far away.

What a terrific showing from our group, eight quilts.

As you can see, I was very surprised to see a blue ribbon pinned on my quilt. This just happens to be my first ever! 

And here's friend Jaye too, with her quilt and ribbon!

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the larger quilt exhibit, but I took this close up of this wonderful quilt made up of the Tilda fabrics I recently bought. I just loved the quilting on the lanterns so much. Sorry for not getting the name of the quilter here.

Friend Jaye and I were looking at this quilt block and trying to remember the name. Isn't it fun? I just love that checkerboard center. And the effective use of "Snowballed" corners on the squares. I need to look this one up in EQ8 and/or Block Base.

We walked around a bit, watched a great local high school's robotics clubs demo robots scooping up foam rings and tossing them in a basket. What fun that would have been in high school to learn robotics. We had some great lunch, there were a ton of choices. We went into the barn with all  the 4-H animal exhibits. There were some great Polish chickens, the ones with the crazy "hair-do's". I really liked this one pig, she was having herself a great dream, kicking out with one of her hooves and ignoring all of us gawkers.

Apparently her name was Trix and she weighed in at 273 pounds.

There were a lot of great exhibits set up, one of which had historical presentations of games, like this Monopoly one. Including the Anti-Monopoly version, Landlords Game and the "Don't Go To Jail!" dice game, ha ha!

Rich Uncle! That's a great play on Monopoly. They had enormous versions of classic games, like Connect Four, including a huge Etch-a-Sketch. My DH tried to turn the knobs, but they just fell off. We unfortunately missed out on the sushi eating contest. (Can you imagine?!)

It was a really fun day out, and I did pretty well with my knee right up until the very end of the day when it suddenly got Very Tired. Thankfully this isn't a super spread-out fairgrounds like ours in Santa Cruz County so our car wasn't too far away.

4 I's All Quilted

 

I've gotten the whole 4 I's quilt all quilted now and am working on the finishing steps.

I'm very pleased with how the quilting and thread color choices turned out.

Really pleased with this section.

If you're around the Bay Area on June 1-9th, come see the quilts at the San Mateo County Fair. There will be a small exhibit of BAMQ pieces.

Very Brief PIQF

I only took a few pictures of a small part of the exhibits at PIQF during a break from the all-day class that I took on Saturday. Unfortunately I didn't get back to see the whole show, so please enjoy these. 

Above is a beautiful Therese May quilt called "Fractured Cat". I really love seeing how her style has changed and evolved over the years but is still recognizably hers. The matchstick quilting was really a great addition to this quilt.

"Modern Meet Manx" by Laura McHugh is a great quilt utilizing pieced blocks in a configuration I've never seen but is super effective visually. 

Hey, here's my quilt, "Lone Round Robin", a little bit rumpled from the journey.

I nearly squealed aloud when I saw this quilt hanging nearby mine, I just love these circles! Christi Sutphen's "The News is Causing Me to See Spots!'. Couldn't agree more with the sentiment.

Here's a bit of closeup of the corner. Great use of word fabrics.

I love these pieced shapes together with the embroidered vines/flowers. Mostly I was attracted to the soft yet vibrant hand dyed rainbow fabrics. The quilting is pretty terrific too. 

This quilt is called "Spinning Spools" made by Frankie Hey and quilted by Beth Handy. Here's a detail of the border so you can see the great appliqué and quilting.

This one is so great, the design is interesting,  balanced and lovely, but those colors are so beautiful and vibrant. 

This detail of "Finding Harmony" by Andrea Barrett shows off the well-thought out quilting design and the clever pieced-in circles.

More on the class that I took tomorrow.

Two Quilts in PIQF

 

I got the excuse to go to Golden State Quilting this week because I was dropping off my quilt, Lone Round Robin. It will be in at the New Quilts of Northern California exhibit at PIQF. That's right, after applying many times, I finally made it into this exhibit. 

Also in the NorCal SAQA exhibit at PIQF you'll be able to see my quilt Grid Work Free.

While at Golden State, I bought a red Miyako leather handle to make a furoshiki bag out of a square of fabric, 

two fat quarters of a great Carrie Bloodstone print, Color Wheels, some more of the fishnet print from Tula Pink's Nightshade Deja Vu for the Set Sail quilt and some more of the Painter's Palette in blackberry to use in the finishing of the Trinket Quilt.