Quilt Show Road Trip Part 2

Here's some more very lovely work from the Pacific International Quilt Festival, held October 13-16, 2011, in Santa Clara, California. Throughout this series, please feel free to leave us a comment and let us know which quilts are your favorites !

Celtic Cranes, 90 x 80, by Lesley Davies, United Kingdom

 
First place winner for "Best Use of Color in the Category of Traditional Quilts",  Celtic Cranes was so popular with the quilt fans that we couldn't get near enough to get a close-up.  It's a luxuriant, richly colored depiction of elegant cranes, bending towards the ground, their long necks curved around their legs. Quilter Lesley Davies used cyan blue and its true complementary color, yellow-orange, to create a show-stopper. It is machine appliqued and machine quilted.

Lesley notes, "I  have always loved Celtic design and have studied ancient illustrated books to search for inspiration for my quilts. The colours I have used are a favorite combination, and I wanted to use silks and gauzes to introduce different texture qualities with the cotton fabric."

Fruit and Feathers, 84 x 84", by Marie O'Kelley,  Seattle, Washington

Blue ribbon winner for "Best Hand Workmanship", Marie writes,  "Over time, I have stumbled into working in a series, one quilt's leftovers inspiring the next creation. An accumulation of green and purple scraps was just the size for appliqued leaves. .......Also on the table were the leftovers from a diamond-pieced background, perfect for a dogtooth border. Time has given me scraps, and they have been my inspiration."

Close-up of Fruit and Flowers by Marie O'Kelley

Marie adds, "The vines and banquets of berries attracted a few birds, (included in this center medallion as well as the inside border),  their plumage likewise shaded in purples and greens." 

We love all things purple, and this charming quilt, with its immaculate hand applique, really caught our eyes !

Desert Life,  36 x 48" by Hilda Koning-Bastiaan,  Danville, California

Speaking of birds, here is another beautiful quilt with a roadrunner as the focal point.  Hilda notes, "In the winter, I spend time in the desert. On my daily walks, I see....roadrunners, cactis, and succulents, my favorites. I used a pattern by Susan Cranshaw to put them in this quilt." 

Close-up of Desert Life, by Hilda Koning-Bastiaan

Hilda's landscape quilt is constructed of horizontal strips of fabric, with a different quilting pattern on each strip, which makes for very distinctive contrasts.  On top of that are appliqued the roadrunner succulents, and cacti whose flowers are attached, but not sewn down,  which gives a great three-dimensional look to this work. 

Grass Trees, 50 x 75, by Gloria Loughman , Victoria, Australia

Gloria Loughman is the author of Luminous Landscapes : Quilted Visions in Paint and Threads. She curated an exhibit within the quilt show titled "A Slice of Oz",  in which she showcases this quilt of hers above and several of her students' quilts.  Gloria notes that the quilts made by her and her students "reflect the colors, of the landscape and vegetation on this vast continent......a land of great contrasts."  The glowing gold and orange grass growing out of the trees is all done by machine quilting, or "thread painting" in which the quilting thread is used to construct actual objects that are part of the landscape. "Grass Trees" is a beautiful and very lifelike tribute to the scenic wonders of Gloria's home country.