VT Quilt Festival

My family had a fantastic weekend kicking around Burlington for the VT Quilt Festival. Thursday started out with a real bang, when we learned that Linus won the Best Young Quilter award for his American Banner project!!

Linus! Look, his name is already on the festival website!

They even showed a photo of his quilt on the screen during the awards ceremony.

It was exciting to see the ribbon hanging on his quilt when we walked past it.

The show was, as expected, a feast for the eyes. In no particular order, I'm posting the photos that I took. There were hundreds more beautiful quilts, but these are the ones that pulled the camera out of my bag for whatever momentary reason.

Escher. No surprise why this one caught my eye. Mary Knapp came to speak at our Greater Hartford Annual Gathering last fall, so I saw this a few months ago.

This project was inspired by the look of a small marbling project. Easy to see why it won the Best Construction award.

Exquisite.

This was just a spectacular full-spectrum feast for the eyes. Every 1.5" square was made from four pieces (QSTs).

Hexagons. And bees. 'nuff said.

More hexagons. Interesting piecing.

Really captivating composition.

I loved the simplicity of this one.

There were surprise "ants" quilted into this watermelon project. I love these colors, and I love love love that she added the black "seeds."

Not really visible in the picture, but every block of this quilt featured one fabric with text of some kind. These little personal-concept projects tickle my fancy. Plus, I also like text fabrics.

Let X=X. Beautiful graphic forms.

Detail from an amazing huge quilt featuring cut-out areas. Remarkable details.

I loved the arrangement of this series as a single installation.

Gorgeous geometric design.

Striking series hung together.

Just wonderful. The full quilt featured hundreds of dog names from literature, songs, and history. Even The Far Side made it ("Blah blah blah Ginger")!

Pretty pretty pretty. From up close, I kind of hated the separate fabrics, but a great example of how the project is so much more than the individual ingredients.

Pretty Lotus

Two days of sewing at the shop and my Lotus quilt is together. I love love love these colors--warm corals and salmon pinks, with coppery and ochre accents. Not the super-bright oranges that I typically choose, but a much more "grown-up" version (and still orange, after all). I used a complete mishmash of fabrics in this little lap quilt: some large prints, some small ones; a variety of lights, mediums, and darks; and at least six different designers.

Lotus quilt (Jaybird Designs), ready to finish

I'll square off the sides of this one (and piece the cut-offs into the back), and I might add a border if I have enough of the coppery brown triangle fabric left. I am also wondering if I have enough cut-off triangles to make a border that wraps the whole way around the quilt. I suppose I could cut a few more if there aren't quite enough in the leftover stack.

Due to the timing of both of our summer vacations, I have missed two journal meetings in a row, so I'm now two months behind on those projects. The June meeting is next Tuesday, and I don't want to have three full projects to complete before July, so I took some time today to get a decent start on the May and June pages. I won't post any details about those pages until I pass them on at the July meeting, but at least I'm encouraged that I'll be all caught up by then.

Lotus class

I spent this fine sunny spring day teaching a class on the Lotus pattern at Lisa's Clover Hill Quilts. Five students, five beautiful quilts underway! This is a great pattern -- extremely easy to sew, and so much potential for different and unique looks with only minor tweaking in the color choices. Thanks to everyone for a fun day!

A few photos of the initial blocks that everybody made:

Debbie's first block -- delicious chocolate-covered cherries!!

Linda is going to have a tropical treat when she finishes her quilt (probably tonight!)

Liz decided to work in a smaller scale, using just one color for all of the small triangles. One of the great things about the ruler is that it makes it simple to scale up to larger pieces or down to smaller pieces with very little effort. All the math is built right in.

Liz's first blocks. I like the way the single-color triangles creates circles.

Sara had some lovely Asian fabrics with rich vibrant colors.

Sue joined us a little late, but still managed to finish three blocks before we wrapped up.

One thing I particularly appreciate about this pattern is that even the scraps are cut off in ready-to-use condition. I have a small stack of half triangles and a hundred or so perfect equilateral triangles ready to assemble.

My Lotus scraps.

I didn't get much of the sewing done, but all the pieces are cut and ready to go. This will be a good take-on-Tuesday project to keep me busy on the next open sew.

Lotus pieces