International Quilt Festival

Have you ever been to Houston to the International Quilt Festival?  The Big One?  Lucky you if you have!  I have not been so fortunate yet, but it is definitely on my bucket list.  The winners of this year's quilt competition were announced this week and if you have not seen them yet, check them out at this link.  So why am I writing about this, you may ask, if I've never been there?  Well, the Best of Show award went to Nancy Prince and Linda French, for "On This Winter Day".  Both of these quilters taught last April at our Virginia Consortium of Quilters Celebration retreat.  Nancy is known for her thread painting, and Linda is a long arm quilter.  In Nancy's newsletter that she sent out earlier this week, she says she spent 7 years (!) working on the thread painted elements for this piece, and finally determined that she needed someone else to quilt it, so asked her friend Linda.   Obviously, the pairing paid off for these quilters and their exquisite work.

Both Elizabeth and I took classes in April from Nancy.  I took her class on Thread Painting, and Elizabeth took one called Thread Sketching.  She is a very good teacher and shares all her techniques to achieve the detailed look of her thread painted quilts.  Of course, my piece has not been finished beyond the thread sketching, but here's what it looked like in progress and with stitching completed.

The first 2 pictures show a section of shrubs and forsythia stitched separately that will be applied as an applique after the other elements are in place.  Below is a tree canopy that we stitched.  A pre-printed house gets fused in front of the tree, and the shrubs fit around the front of the house.  Sorry, no completed picture yet!

The picture below shows Nancy demonstrating how to hoop the fabric for stitching.

The photo below is from the Thread Sketching class that Elizabeth took on the second day.

 

As I looked through the winners of IQF, I noticed there were a few others that have also taught at our Celebration retreat in the past.  Becky Goldsmith is an award winning applique artist, teacher, and author who taught for us in 2012.  Karen Eckmeier is another teacher/author who taught at 2 previous Celebrations, 2012 and 2010.  We have been fortunate to have an array of award winning quilters visit us here in Virginia to share their expertise and love of quilting.  Who might we see at Celebration 2016??  Please enjoy viewing the many lovely prize winning quilts of IQF 2014.