Quilts Celebrating Creativity ! part 2

Welcome to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association 2019 show! The Santa Clara Valley lies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay in Northern California. This year's show, titled Quilts Celebrating Creativity,  featured some outstanding works by talented quilters. Here are more of our favorites!

(Note: please check out our E-Bay shop for great bargains on quilt patterns and collectibles ! For continuous free quilt patterns, please visit us on Twitter !)

Samba Selfie, 39 x 39”, by Randa Mulford

Randa Mulford was a featured quilter at this year's show, and we are sharing several of her quilts today.  She says, "A selfie of my daughter and her friend dressed to participate in a samba parade during their student year in Chile was the inspiration for this collage quilt... The background shows the shore of lake Llanquihue in Puerto Varas, Chile, with the Osorno volcano in the background and fireworks over the lake."

Randa continues, "The biggest challenge was creating the contours of their faces and shoulders from printed fabric."  This quilt conveys the happiness and friendship the girls must have felt as they enjoyed the parade!

Radial Sonnet, 42 x 42”, by Randa Mulford

Randa explains that "Radial Sonnet is a kaleidoscope quilt, created for a challenge with the theme “sonnet.” (A sonnet is a 14-line poem with the specific rhyme scheme ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG). The central design has 14 wedges and the patterns inside the wedges reflect the rhythm of the poem."

We really enjoyed Randa's fantastic choice of fabrics, along with her use of fancy stitches to quilt the background circles, as shown below.

On Campus: Lewis & Clark College, 26 x 33”, by Randa Mulford

We love map quilts! Randa explains, "I began this quilt in an advanced composition workshop with Valerie Goodwin as a gift for my daughter upon her graduation from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. It features a map of the campus in the center, with an image of the beautiful Frank Manor House (now an admin building) at the bottom and Mount Hood looming over it all (assuming it’s a clear day!)  The closeup photo, below, shows Randa's excellent applique and quilting techniques.

Glorious Clams, 60 x 70”, by Denise Martin

Denise Martin says, "[Fellow quilter] Joni Strother showed me this quilt in Quilter’s Newsletter. Carole Donovan let me use her magazine. This is the result, three years later. I had fun using fabrics from my large stash of beachy fabrics."

The Quilters Newsletter pattern description says, "Foundation piecing and curved seams make this a challenging quilt to make, but the beautiful results are worth the effort."

Sedona Opus, 33 x 69”, by Tracy Visher

Tracy Visher made this outstanding, colorful landscape quilt. She says, "My husband and I have a strong affinity for Sedona (Arizona), Santa Fe (New Mexico), and the surrounding desert lands. I have had a Sedona art quilt in my head for years and finally tackled the “prickly subject”. My personal challenge was to show the depth of the landscape and the many hues of the red rock formations."

Tracy continues,"I further challenged myself to figure out how to make a dimensional foreground, showing some of the native plants that live in these regions (like the agave plant shown above). It is the largest, most complex art quilt I have attempted to date."
The large embroidery stitches on the cholla cactus, shown below, lend an extremely realistic feel!

Image credits:  Photos were taken at the 2019 Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association show.

Quilts Celebrating Creativity ! part 1

Welcome to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association 2019 show! The Santa Clara Valley lies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay in Northern California. This year's show, titled Quilts Celebrating Creativity,  featured some outstanding works by talented quilters. Here are a few of our favorites!

(Note: please check out our E-Bay shop for great bargains on quilt patterns, fabric, and collectibles ! For continuous free quilt patterns, please visit us on Twitter !)

From The Golden State by Judy Rudolph

Right now, the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association is participating in an exchange program known as "Quilts Across the Pacific", where each member has a sister quilter in Australia with whom to share designs, patterns, and quilt ideas.

Judy Rudolph says, "This quilt was made as my exchange quilt for Patricia Keevers in Australia. I drew inspiration from California's state nickname, 'The Golden State'. The center features a Mariner's Compass block using the Ruth Robin Fat Robin ruler. 

Close-up, From the Golden State

Judy adds, "The center was hand appliqued, and the compass was hand appliqued to the background. The machine embroidery design was from the 50 States Collection by Anita Goodesign. The compass was trapuntoed with an extra layer of wool batting and big stitch quilting was used to highlight the star points and the circular designs in the background."  We appreciate all of Judy's hard work and the beautiful results !

Daisy by Mandy Fleig

Here's another quilt made as part of the quilt exchange with quilter friends in Australia. Mandy writes, "This quilt features Daisy, my Australian friend's pup. As I have become acquainted with my friend across the Pacific, I realized how similar we are. I lost my beloved pup that was also a yellow Labrador Retriever several years ago. The pictures of Daisy remind me that no matter where we live, how different we appear, really we are all the same. We all want to love and be loved."

Close-up, Daisy

Wonderful thread painting work here really emphasizes Daisy's friendly countenance and soulful eyes. Mandy has done an excellent job in using a variety of neutral fabrics to highlight this yellow Lab's attractive markings.

Yosemite Falls by Jaunell Waldo

Jaunell explains, "I wanted to create a quilt introducing my new Australian friend to one of my favorite places on the planet. Picking a specific place within Yosemite National Park was tricky, but I finally settled on the waterfalls because it will give her an idea of the overall majesty of the park." 

Close-up, Yosemite Falls

We really admire this very lifelike landscape quilt which captures the texture of the rushing water, the large trees, and the surrounding sun-dappled rocks.

La Passacaglia Unravels by Randa Mulford

Randa Mulford was a featured quilter at this show.  She states, "This quilt was my first foray into English paper piecing-- I haven't hand-pieced a quilt in many years ! It's been a fun journey, which I've been sharing with other quilters making the "La Passcaglia" pattern by Willyne Hammerstein.  One goal of this quilt was to use only fabrics from stash, mostly prints by Paula Nadelstern." 

Close-up, La Passacaglia Unravels

Randa continues, "My innovation on Hammerstein's design was to 'unravel' the portions of the rosettes that lay outside of the rectangular perimeter of her design. This quilt won first prize in the Traditional Quilts category at the 2018 Chicago International Quilt Festival."  We certainly like this quilt, which is full of beautiful jewel-tone fabrics.

Hippie Daze by Mel Beach

To describe her quilt, Mel has selected a quotation from Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." Mel says, "Hippie Daze" originated in response to a particularly negative world news cycle. As I stitched out the background design, I gained a renewed sense of hope. Once the quilting was complete, careful cutwork revealed more of my hand-dyed fabrics hidden underneath.
Wishing all peace, love, and happiness ! "

Close-up, Hippie Daze

These giant vividly colored flowers and the tie-dyed motifs in the center really take us back to our youth in the 1960's ! We think this quilt is so cheery and fun -- a real day brightener.

Image credits:  Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the 2019 SCVQA show.