Blog Readers’ Quilts and Quilting Information:  March 18, 2014

The Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival

Norfolk, Virginia

I had a terrific time attending The Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Norfolk, Virginia–for me, February 29th and March 1st and 2nd–each time with different people.  I have not been to a big regional quilt show without grandchildren in tow for some years now–and it is a real pleasure to attend a quilt show that is outside of the region where you live.  The vendors are different, the emphasis on quilts is different, and so forth.  This Mid-Atlantic show is run by the Mancuso brothers and leans towards art quilts–though this year (it’s 25th) there was a lovely exhibition of log-cabin quilts–each with a different setting.

I will confess that the quilts I like best are not often the BIG WINNERS.  I am a scrappy quilter.

For instance, I saw many novel use of the current quilt rage:  hexies.

Look at how the use of connecting squares makes these hexies so much more interesting than if they were jammed up together:

And how about using hexies to form a bar in a bar quilt?  (Sorry about the slight blurring, but you’ll get the method.)

Here’s a quilt I didn’t see until the last day I went–it was hanging on the end of a wall, and I just lost it in the blur of vendors beyond it.  How you see quilts really varies from which direction you approach them.

Here’s the whole quilt:

The chickens were amazing:

Contrast the above quilts with one of the big winners of this show:

Exquisite quilting, novel use of color–especially that bright yellow.  Here’s a close-up of the quilting:

It seems to me that this type of medallion quilt which is quilted to death is meant to win in a show.  The quilt itself does not draw me at all.

The BIG WINNER (Best of Show) was a larger version of the above–amazing workmanship, lots of beading as well, but I didn’t even take a picture of it.

Here’s another big winner:

Clever, whimsical, etc.  But is it any better than this quilt?

Or, this one?

Here’s a close-up of the amazing thread work:

This funny little quilt really drew me in:

Here’s a close-up of the block:

I love floral art quilts.  Here’s a really nice one:

And this quilt was really interesting–I took this picture for you Sarah Ann Smith because, like your quilting, the quilting seems to be working WITH the quilt rather than just filling spaces with novel designs:

I love the New York Beauty block–and there were some very pretty New York Beauty quilts at the show.  Here’s one:

What piqued my interest was that the block quadrants vary considerably within each circle.  I hadn’t really seen this kind of variation before this quilt.

And I love buttons.  Look at this very fun quilt–much of which was appliquéd–and the use of buttons:

This quilt won “best use of color”–and was painted, then quilted.  It glowed.

Birds were a fairly big theme at both the quilt show and the vendors.  This quilt–and my big picture did not come out–was made of individual birds that were each made of many, many different fabrics that were accurate to the specific bird.  Here’s one of about a dozen birds:

And here’s another bird quilt I liked a lot:

Quilts featuring forests and trees always draw me in.  This quilt was no exception, and the thread work of the needles was beautiful.

I almost missed this quilt, too.  I didn’t really “see” it until the third day:

The water colors in this quilt were lovely.  This is a close-up–not quite the whole quilt:

And what’s not to like about THIS quilt, which I will leave you with: