Houston IQF, Part 3

Hi all -

Now I'm just going to share some of the other beautiful quilts from the show. First are a couple of miniatures that really blew me away:

Tempest by Kumiko Frydl

Sunday's Best by Rachelle Denneny

Detail of Sunday's Best by Rachelle Denneny

6522 by George Siciliano

Remember, these are all miniatures, so something like 12" to 18" square. Incredible!!

Here are some other quilts that caught my eye:

Tink's Choice by Laura Trenbeath

Detail of Tink's Choice by Laura Trenbeath

Baltimore Album Tribute by Jackie Perry

Detail of Baltimore Album Tribute by Jackie Perry

Winter Squash by Lauretta Crites

Georgetown Wedding by Ann Petersen

Detail of Georgetown Wedding by Ann Petersen

Magnolia by Sylvia Gegaregian

Cherry Blossoms at Night by Makiko Aoki

Hummingbirds in my Garden by Lynn McCartney

Detail of Hummingbirds in my Garden by Lynn McCartney

Yellow Sky by Shirley Gisi

Fireball by Candice Phelan

Detail of Fireball by Candice Phelan

This next quilt is really incredible. All three pictures are of the same quilt!

Frame of Mind by Flora Joy

Frame of Mind by Flora Joy

Frame of Mind by Flora Joy

So, depending on where you're standing, you'll see either Oprah Winfrey, Mother Theresa or Jackie Kennedy Onasis. Isn't that cool???

Well, I think that's a good overview of the quilts. I hope you enjoyed it!

Nancy

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hi all -

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!  Here are Lance and Buttercup after a little turkey feast:

And Wesley has found a comfy spot to hide away:

I'm thankful for my wonderful friends and family!  Have a wonderful day!!

Nancy

Houston IQF, Part 2

Hi all -

Well, I had written a long post with a bunch of pictures, and then it wouldn't publish and I had to start over again. Grrrr!!  But we always do better the second time, don't we? And I think I know what happened so I can hopefully avoid the problem in the future. So, here we go again...

It's time to share some of the Houston quilts with you. Everything was so incredible, where do I start? One of the most fun parts of Houston for me is meeting up with friends, so in this post I'll share the quilts of some of my friends.

Who better to start with than my new, good friend Peggy. I think I mentioned before that we met in one of my classes and really hit it off. We ended up being in three classes together and hung out together after class on Sunday until Peggy had to head to the airport. She is a longarm quilter and had two incredible quilts in the show. The first is a wholecloth called Odyssey:

Odyssey by Peggy Kragnes

Detail of Odyssey by Peggy Kragnes

Isn't it incredible? I hope you can see all of the wonderful details in the photos. Her other quilt was pieced:

Green Miles by Peggy Kragnes

Detail of Green Miles by Peggy Kragnes

Detail of Green Miles by Peggy Kragnes

Again, the quilting just blows me away! And, although you really can't see it in the pictures, the greens are all different fabrics giving it that wonderful sparkle that you get in a scrap quilt. I LOVE scrap quilts!

The next quilt was made by a group of quilters who are members of TQS (TheQuiltShow.com). Their names are Dana Lynch, Mary Holman, Mary Kay Runyan, Cindy Neville, Wanda Myers, Bridget Lilja and Karen Fitzpatrick and they are known as "The Amazing Eight". They met at Houston 5 years ago and decided to make a quilt together. (Sorry if I got any of the numbers wrong!) Well, they had so much fun that this is now their third group quilt and it won a blue ribbon in the group quilt category in Houston. I met Wanda in a class in Houston a couple of years ago and was lucky enough to meet up with her in another class last year. Here she is showing me their quilt:

Amazing Aztec-nicolor Dream Quilt by The Amazing Eight

This quilt is really incredible! The detail is amazing and everything is so coherent that it's impossible to tell that it was made by a group. Congratulations to all of you!!

Another TQS friend who had quilts at Houston is Betty Jo Tatum. She retired a year or two ago and has been concentrating on her art quilting. I was lucky enough to meet her in person at the show this year. Here is the quilt that she had in the contest:

Sky Horse by Betty Jo Tatum

 She also had a quilt in the architecture exhibit:

Perspective in Threads by Betty Jo Tatum

A TQS friend who I don't know as well, but who always has quilts in the big shows is Pat Durbin. Here are her two quilts from Houston:

Wild Rhodies by Pat Durbin

Detail of Wild Rhodies by Pat Durbin

Begonia Cluster by Pat Durbin

I'm pushing the definition of "friend" with this next artist, Lea McComas. I have taken her fusible applique protraits course in the TQS classroom hope to use her technique to make a quilt someday when I have time. And I've talked to her through their forum. But she really wouldn't know who I am. She hails from Superior, CO, which is very close to where I live. In fact, I used to live on the outskirts of Superior. So, we really could be friends, don't you think? She makes really incredible portrait quilts with thread work that is just out of this world. Here is her quilt that won a blue ribbon in Houston:

Panning for Gold by Lea McComis

And her quilt that won the thread mastery award:

Bike Boys by Lea McComis

All I can say is "WOW!".

That's it for the quilts by TQS friends. I also have some friends from the other Web site that I follow, Machine Quilter's Resource (mqresource.com) who had quilts in the show. First up is Donna James. She makes some gorgeous, intricate wholecloth quilts. Here's the one she had in the show, along with its ribbon:

Spring Meditation by Donna James

Detail of Spring Meditation by Donna James

Doesn't that just blow you away? I was lucky enough to be able to meet Donna at the show and she is as nice in person as she is online.

Next up in Bethanne Nemesh, also from MQR. Bethanne is an artist and quilter. She makes pieced quilts and incorporates her drawings into the quilting. Isn't it incredible???

Gilding the Arbor by Bethanne Nemesh

Detail of Gilding the Arbor by Bethanne Nemesh

She has another quilt that incorporates drawings of her children at the beach in the quilting that I would love to see in person!

Another quilter from MQR is Margaret Solomon Gunn. She's not on there often so I don't know her well, but I did get to meet her at the show. She had two quilts in the contest:

Autumn's Surrender by Margaret Solomon Gunn

Springtime in the Geisha's Garden by Margaret Solomon Gunn

They are just gorgeous!

Well, that's all of the quilts by people that I know. The other fun part of Houston for me is meeting up with friends. This year my friend Cindy was able to go to the show. We've been friends for over 20 years and get together once a month for sew day. Her daughter moved to Houston last year, so hopefully Cindy will be able to join me regularly at the show. We had fun getting together and discussing the different classes we were taking. I also got to see a lot of my TQS friends Shirley and Dawn. They were staying in the same hotel as me, so we ran into each other often in the executive lounge. And Dawn and I kept running into each other in the show so we got to enjoy a lot of the quilts together. Finally, I ran into my other TQS friend, Robin, but we were both heading to classes in different directions so we didn't get to talk much. But we'll definitely get together for lunch or something next year if we both get to the show!

That's about it for my friends at Houston. I hope you enjoyed their quilts! I'll share some of the other quilts from the show in another post. But that's a good taste of the show for now.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Nancy

TQS Taping

 Hi all -

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the taping of The Quilt Show yesterday.  Fun! Fun! Fun! To add to the fun, my friend Sharon from Greeley was also able to attend, so I got to spend a wonderful day with her.

This year, The Quilt Show tapings are being held at the Comcast facility in Centennial, CO. This makes it a bit of a drive for me (about 2 hours), but it was well worth it! This year they also allowed us to take pictures, so I snapped a few to share with you. Of course, I didn't think about taking general shots of the room, but you'll get a sense of the setup from the pictures that I have. First, here's a picture of part of the audience:

There are two banks of chairs like this one. One of the volunteers told me that they issue 60 tickets for each taping, but often not everyone will show up. I think we had close to the 60 at our taping, although a few of them didn't come back after lunch for some reason. One of the things that is nicer about this facility than the one in Boulder that has been used for the last couple of years is the stadium seating. Everyone in the audience can now see what's going on without heads in the way. You can see behind the audience members some beautiful quilts that make a nice back-drop during the taping of the audience and are nice for us to look at during breaks.  Here are some pictures of a couple of the quilts:

 
The lighting really makes these quilts glow! I think the first quilt was made by Ricky and the second quilt by Alex, but I'm not sure about that. I didn't think to look at the labels while I was there.

So, what's it like to be an audience member? We come in and take a seat and watch while the crew and the talent (yep, that's what Alex and Ricky are called) get ready for the different shots. While they are taping, of course, we keep quiet except for reactions to what is happening in the taping. If something is funny, we can laugh. If something is exciting, we can clap. For certain segments, we are instructed to clap in and out of the segment. For those, we have to clap a lot longer than you would expect so that they can cut it to whatever they need in production. There are also segments that, instead of clapping, end with the "long creepy stare". For those, Alex, Ricky and the guest have to just sit there and stare for an uncomfortably long time so that they can edit it to the right length at the end. It's pretty funny to watch!  I certainly couldn't do it myself without laughing or having a coughing fit!!  After the taping of an episode, there is a taping session of the audience. For those, we are told to do something like "oooh" and "aaah" or clap or give a big belly laugh and they tape us so they can cut those in at the appropriate points. Isn't that fun???

For this taping, the first guest was Barbara Shapel (www.barbarashapel.com). She is a fiber artist who is known for her thread painting of wildlife, especially herons. Her work is incredible!! She uses the same thread in the top and bobbin so that her quilts are two-sided. And she generally uses a solid black fabric for her backing to make the front a day picture and the back a night picture. Incredible! To give you a sense of her work, here is the front of a quilt that was shown to the audience during one of the breaks:

This quilt consists of a solid blue piece of fabric with all of the picture being thread work. Incredible, huh?  Well, it becomes even more incredible when you see the back:

 

Again, it's a solid black piece of fabric with all of the detail coming from the thread. The pictures don't do it justice!! She also has a quilt of a mother wolf. On the front she has the mother thread painted. When you turn it to the back, nighttime image, you can see her 3 babies who were thread-painted with invisible thread on the front side and colored thread on the back. Incredible! Here they are getting ready to film a demo. The wolf quilt is hanging above the demo table.

And here is Justin filming the intro. As you can see, they have large TVs on each side of the audience so we can see what is being filmed, even when the cameras are in our way.

The second guest was Joanne Sharpe (artfulquiltandstitch.blogspot.com). She is an artist who paints the backgrounds of her quilts and includes text in them. She showed us how to make fusible appliques of text in our own handwriting and some of the tools she uses for painting her quilts. I didn't seem to get any pictures with her in them, but you can see some of her work in the background of this picture of the set:

And here is a little piece of hers that was passed around the audience during one of the breaks:

I really like how bright and happy her work is! And she's an amusing lady to listen to.

During the breaks, John's job is to keep the audience entertained. He tells us jokes and shares interesting trivia. Sometimes Alex, Ricky and Justin will join him.

He also entertains us with quilts. Here is this year's BOM:

He also showed us next year's BOM, Alex's quilt that was made for the Libby Lehman auction and Libby's quilt that was Alex's inspiration. And my final thing to share are Lea McComas' little quilts that she made as gifts for them when they filmed her show on Saturday:

 Aren't those incredible? Lea is so talented!!

That's all about the taping. I have to rush off now because the Kansas Jayhawks game is just starting....

Happy Quilting!

Nancy