Quilts from the Springville Museum of Art (part 2)

Each year, the Springville Museum of Art (Utah) has one of the best quilt shows around.  It features award-winning quilts from Utah, a state blessed with an abundance of accomplished quilters. Here are some highlights of this year's show!

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Exuberance by Helen Butler

Winner of an Award of Excellence, this stunning heirloom quilt was a decade in the making. Helen Butler says, "Having started this quilt 10 years ago, this is the feeling I had upon its completion.  The mere size created a degree of difficulty on my home machine to quilt. Thus the feeling of exuberance entered my soul when I was able to pronounce it done!"

It is a reproduction of an antique quilt on display at the Henry Ford Museum (in Dearborn, Michigan). Helen Butler created this masterpiece using needle turn applique, trapunto, thread painting, and piping add to the dimension of this quilt.  All of the quilting designs are original.

Beauty All Around by Myrt Gehring, quilted by Carole Lifferth

Myrt Gehring says,  "I really enjoyed working with wool.  This is my second wool quilt but [it] was a challenge for me and stretched me to learn new concepts.  I loved all the colors and felt they blended well.  All Jewel tones that I love. This quilt took me over a year to complete and most of the time was very enjoyable!"  (Note: The design is by Joyce Weeks at Geoff's Mom Pattern Company.)

Teal Unstopped by Toni Sharp, quilted by Cindy Williams

Teal Unstopped was begun in a class, and each month the class focused on a different lone star design.  Toni Sharp says, "The teal fabrics tied the stars together, and Cindy Williams' custom quilting further enhanced the stars." We loved the interesting fabric choices and colors, and admired Toni's perfect piecing technique!  Here are two closeup photos.

Seminole - Southwest by Marian Murdock

This quilt is all Seminole strip pieced, using both traditional and non-traditional Seminole designs in a large scale.  Winner of Honorable Mention at the show, Marian Murdock says, "I chose colors of the desert Southwest, but my design inspiration came from the Seminole Native Americans of South Florida.  The Seminoles are known for their brightly colored intricate pieced bands used in their traditional clothing."

Marian explains, "The most challenging part of designing it was figuring out the size of the strips so the pieced bands did not cut off in an odd place. I wanted to keep the focus on the piecing, so I kept the quilting simple, mostly in-the-ditch, which I did on a home machine."

Love Groves by Jennifer Gunnell, quilted by Lisa White

There is a bevy of colorful trees in this eye-catching quilt! Love Groves is made from thousands of diamond shapes, using hundreds of batik fabrics, and each tree has a unique quilted pattern.  Jennifer Gunnel says, "I have a tradition of making wedding quilts for my daughters.  This one was made for my youngest daugther whose nickname is "Tree". Our family tree is forever growing in Groves of Love."

Each tree canopy is made from four equilateral triangle sections, made from diamond-shaped patches in a manner similar to a Bethlehem star quilt.The source of the design was not listed on the quilt description, but it reminds us of the blocks in "From Little Things, Big Things Grow" by Sarah Fielke for Lecien Fabrics (see the free PDF download here.)

Image credits:  Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the Springville Museum of Art.