Day 3 Manchester Quilt Show

We spent Friday in Manchester at the World Quilt New England show, one of the Mancuso shows.  This is a smaller show (compared to Mid-Atlantic) but nice in a different way.  It features show entries from quilters around the world, and the quilts are grouped by country.  There is a prize for Best of Country for each group in addition to the usual prize categories.  We found there to be a great mix of techniques in the show quilts.  Rather than just show our favorite quilts, we decided to each choose four that we thought most interesting because of their techniques. 

"Bloom - Remember the Honey Bees" won Best of Country for New Zealand, and is made by Mary Transom.  It has a hand painted background, raw edge applique, collage, couching, stamping, and machine embroidery.  The bees were painted and then machine embroidered.  It is an original design.

"Migrating Birds" was also a Best of Country winner for Israel and it's maker, Rachel Steiner.  The impressive thing about this piece is that it is done with discharge.  It is a whole cloth quilt, meaning it started out as a piece of black fabric that the maker took color out of by using a Q-tip dipped in bleach!  In other words, lots of painstaking work created all those birds!  Discharging black fabric usually results in varying shades of rust or brown.  There is also lots of stitching which helps create the color story.

"Ode to Banksias 7" is by Susan Mathews of Australia.  This quilt is from a series featuring native Australian plants.  We liked the sunny yellow and the fact that the background fabrics are lino printed and hand dyed, and the plant images are screen printed.  Techniques that are right up our alley!  It's fun to see how other people use these techniques.

Raita Sawyer of the United Kingdom created "Tangram Activity".  A tangram is an ancient Chinese puzzle creating a square out of 7 pieces.  The tangram figures are bursting with energy.  It is machine pieced, appliqued and quilted and an original design.

Winning honorable mention in the Innovative category is "Skyscraper Sunflowers" by Kathryn Harmer Fox of South Africa (full image on the left). The base fabric is cotton duck canvas and she has used snippets of many fabrics that are scribble stitched to the background to create her design.  There are also pieces of colored netting incorporated into the work.

"Memories of Scotland" is by Kathleen Matthews of the United Kingdom.  The center panel of this quilt was first painted with acrylic paints.  The bordering pictures are photos printed on fabric.  All are heavily stitched and thread painted.  Below is a collage of some close ups of various parts of the quilt.

"Hundreds and Thousands - Little Green Squares" is by Sue Bax of South Africa.  Sue says she started this quilt in a workshop and was inspired by a green jelly roll of Kaffe Fassett fabrics to which she added many other fabrics.  You have to look at the detail photo (enlarge by clicking) to see how small some of these squares really are!

One of the special exhibits at the show was HERstory Quilts: A Celebration of Strong Women curated by our friend Suzanne Miller Jones.  The quilt above is one of the quilts in the exhibit, "Ruby Bridges", made by Willa Downes.  Willa is also a friend of ours - in fact, we made the thermofax screen she used to print the desk images on her quilt.  It's always fun to see work by a customer, especially when it's hanging in a show!

World Quilt Show New England

World Quilt Show New England at the Radisson Center of New Hampshire is a Mancuso quilt show that typically takes place in Manchester NH in August of each year.  Elizabeth and her mother usually go to view the show.  Along with Sue, they both have also been to the Mancuso show that is held in February of each year in Tidewater Virginia, most recently at the Hampton Convention Center.  These two Mancuso shows differ greatly from each other as do the reasons we attend.

The Hampton show, called “Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival is four days in a very large venue with dozens of vendors selling everything from old and new sewing machines, to quilting supplies, books, jewelry, and anything else that can be connected to quilting.  The winning quilts in the center of the show are spectacular and since it is not a juried show has many entries from beginning quilts to those beauties in the winner’s circle.  It also includes many special exhibits from groups and guilds around the state and the country.  Lots and lots to see and we typically spend all four days at the show!  A large portion of that time is spent at vendors and shopping.

In contrast, the World Quilt show is all about the quilts.  They come, as the name suggests from all over the world, so tend to be of exquisite workmanship.  Great examples of what the trends in quilting are from countries as diverse as Israel, Japan, Germany, and Australia.  There are many examples of fantastic design, color choices, and novel techniques.  The show is in two hotel conference rooms so is more intimate than a large convention center and the lighting is better in the hotel than in the convention center.  Fewer vendors, but enough to look at and collect any supplies, but truthfully, with all the row by row shopping we were rather spent out and made only a quick pass by the vendors.

Here are some photos from the 2015 show.

Memories by Niza Hoffman, Israel.

Calendula by Klara Schafler-Landesberg, Israel

Free Tibet by Meri H Vahl, California

Parisian Garden by Annette Morgan, United Kingdom

A portion of the "Inspired by the Beatles" exhibit.

World Quilt Show - New England

Last week Elizabeth went to the World Quilt Show New England in Manchester, NH.  It is one of the shows put on by Mancuso Show Management.  In addition to the standard show entries and vendors, one of the special exhibits was the "Along the Spice Route" exhibit, in which both Elizabeth and Sue have quilts.

 

Along the Spice Route is an exhibit of 41 wall quilts interpreting a spice used in cooking today and its country of origin. In addition to the artistic interpretation of a spice, the goal of the exhibit is to provide a learning opportunity about the origins of spices, learn the importance of early trade routes and the connection between countries. The exhibit is curated by Ann Reardon and Paula Golden.

We've shared pictures of our spice quilts before, but Elizabeth was so excited to see her quilt in person hanging in a show.  She reports that the venue was bright and well lit and it was a pleasure to view the quilts in that setting.  It's always a little nerve wracking to go to see your own quilt in public as you hope it hangs straight and has good lighting along with being seen as a good example of your work.  Having your mother come along to check it out added a bit to the stress too.  Elizabeth was happy with her quilt hanging in the exhibit and of course is a great admirer of Sue's exquisite work so she knew her quilt would come across as fabulous!

Here are some more photos from the exhibit.

 

Sue's Mustard Seed on the left, and Star Anise by Mary Beth Bellah.

 Elizabeth's China Black Pepper.

Road To Mathura by Carole Nicholas

Merci Edmond Albious by Beth Weisner

The show will also be at two upcoming venues in Virginia - the Sewing and Quilt Expo in Fredericksburg, VA, Oct. 1-3, and Center for the Arts, Manassas, VA, Nov. 5 - Dec. 16, 2015.