More from the Quilt Show in the Bahamas...

The short walk from the ship's pier in Nassau to the church where The Stepping Stones Quilters' show was being held presented us with lots of color to whet our appetites. These vibrant paintings adorned the sides of buildings along our route.

 The first display that met us inside the show was the group quilt challenge. The rules for the entries included using 5 different fabrics (linen, wool, cotton, silk, and synthetic) and 5 different embellishments, plus an ovoid shape. Here are the creations of some of the quilters.

From this spiny "Lionfish" by Lisa Knowles, that even included sand and small shell embellishments, to Faberge Eggs, to undersea life ... the group really exercised their imaginations which is what a challenge is all about.

There was Viewer's Choice voting in several categories, and for the challenge category, Lisa's "Lionfish" was the winner.

My apologies... after checking my notes I realized I had incorrectly credited the Star-in-a-Star quilt, shown below, in my last post.. it's actually the work of quiltmaker Junko Yamaguchi who had many beautiful quilts exhibited.

Quilting friend Maria Chisnall is a driving force behind The Stepping Stone Quilters Guild and the quilt show, which has been held for more than 20 years. Five photos of her work are shown below. One thing that impressed our traveling band of quilters was the variety in techniques represented by the show quilts, and Maria herself employs many different methods in her work.

This bed-size quilt was large enough that I was unable to capture all of it in a single photo. This is just the quilt center, featuring piecing and applique. The quilt also had a wide white inner border with a scrappy pieced outer border.

Maria had several entries in the wall quilt category. I found this one especially appealing, and like her use of color, along with the use of stripes and florals in the sashing.

  Maria, who has some Scottish ancestry, also created this series of seasonal Scottish landscape studies.

I learned from Maria which were the winning quilts in the other categories, and will share them here next time.