Even though I'm up to my eyeballs in moving from farm to city, and not sewing or crafting a thing, I still enjoyed our guild's bus trip to the annual Jacksonville QuiltFest. It was good practice in self-discipline needed to avoid purchasing fabrics and supplies. I'd only have to move them! Upon entering the exhibit hall, my eye was immediately drawn to this colorful abstract design. It's called "View from the Window" by Susan Skatoff.
It seems each year I'm drawn to different types of quilts. Last year my post focused on circle designs. This year it was the Modern Quilts. I'm told that this is the first year the organization had a category for Modern Quilt designs. And the designers and makers of the style really showed up with some spectacular entries. Quiltmaker Candi Lennox referred to the "joyful chaos" of her scrappy pieced "Rummage" quilt.
Modern Quilts are generally characterized by improvisational piecing, abstract designs, asymmetry, bold color palettes often worked in solids, and negative space as a design element. This entry, also by Candi Lennox and titled "Primitive Plains", illustrates this with units of improvisational piecing in varied sizes along with the the bright solids.
"Going Round in Circles" was Erica Dodge's entry and it was her first attempt at improv piecing. Her bright, irregularly pieced color wheels are offset and surrounded by low-volume solids with more improv piecing.
Good friend and quilter Linda Hungerford of Flourishing Palms blog really went to town with her "maximilist" take on improv piecing. After piecing the units and assembling the top, she also added appliqued circles atop the piece in what she terms a "more is more" approach. Notice the black and white binding that really finishes this piece so nicely.
This two-color entry is also made by Linda Hungerford. It features more improvisational free-cutting and piecing along with appliqued circle accents. Linda quilted it on her domestic machine, but also added lovely hand quilting using The Big Stitch method. We had a nice opportunity to visit and catch up at the show, and Linda brought me a sweet gift- the pop-up thread catcher shown at the end of this post. I hope to have some threads to catch very soon! I'm suffering a bit of sewing machine withdrawal.
There were many other styles of quilts to enjoy at the show, too, of course. So I had to include this "Finn-a-Green" horse quilt by Lauren Jackson. I just love all of the various quilting motifs she included to enhance the horse image.
And what a face! Meet "Jake" by Jennifer Farago. Her info card says "Jake is a good boy," but we knew that by just looking at him.
Every year the organizers of the show conduct a quilt challenge. This year the theme was Quilt Your Heart Out. Eve Vallorani had some fun with her collage quilt titled "Sew Your Heart Out."
There were many lovely entries, but "Love Thy Scraps" by Mary DeWind especially caught my eye.
Here's the thread catcher by Linda. It folds right down flat or pops up to get to work! Thanks, Linda. And I must apologize for the slightly out-of-focus photos. Something has changed and I don't know what. Same phone, same method of posting. But they look a little fuzzy. Wish I were more techy.
