Highlights from the Houston Quilt Show

Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Houston International Quilt show. These are not your ordinary quilts.  They are all original designs, executed by some of the best quilters in the business.

This quilt by Setsuko Matsushima of Japan won the Founder's Award.  I'm not generally a fan of mostly grey quilts, but this one caught my eye.  I really like how it's a fascinating mixture of both American art, in the traditional quilt blocks, and Japanese art in the depiction of the waves.  This quilt honors and offers a ray of hope to those who suffered due to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Here's  Kimberly Lacey of Colorado standing by her First Place winning quilt.  The design of this quilt was inspired by ammonites, a very extinct sea shell found as fossils.  (Who says there's no science in the fabric arts?)  The pattern was created with shimmering fabric paints on silk, rather than the more traditional pieced or appliqued fabrics.  She's just getting started at as a professional quilter, so if you like her work, check out her website here.

What to do when you know what fabric design you want, but it doesn't exist?  Why, you create it in the computer and then have it printed!  That's exactly what happened with this striking quilt by Karlee Porter of Utah.  If you like the design, she's got it for sale.

If you like more traditional piecing and applique, check out this quilt by Beth Nufer of Oregon. It was made from fabric that shades from white to grey and then solid brightly colored fabric.  The idea is to give the quilt a 3D effect.

For the mathematically inclined, there's this quilt by Claudia Pfeil of Germany.  The black shapes are inspired by the Mandelbrot set, one of the very first fractals that was discovered.  Fractals have infinitely detailed shapes, so working with them in quilting is quite a challenge.

There's some totally fun things at the show too, like this scene of Flamingos all dressed for a party by Beth Miller of Australia.

Or this fishy quilt by Tomiko Onishi of Japan.  Look carefully -- all those fish are actually vegetables!

My cousin Suzy Webster had two quilts in the show this year.  The top one, Dotville, was inspired by a class she took at last year's show.  The bottom one, Order to Chaos, is based on a design created by her father, John Shier.  His artistic explorations have resulted in a completely new way to generate fractal geometries.  You can check out Suzy's blog about quilting here and John's webpage here.

Come back next week and see how I am dealing with the challenges posed by mid-rise pants.

Wrap Dress with Applique

Last Sunday was Easter and that's a day when a lot of lovely dresses come out of the closet.  It was no exception for me.  I didn't make a new dress, but wore one originally made for an event last summer.

The dress started out as Simplicity 8137, a simple wrap dress.   I didn't like the sleeve, so I changed it out for a flutter sleeve -- a very full, short sleeve.  I also had to modify the dress to fit me.

 The dress is made of polyester-cotton broadcloth, which has very little stretch, so proper fitting is required.  This material has a couple of advantages for this project.  First, it's quite inexpensive and when a dress requires 5 yards of fabric, that starts to matter.  Also, it's a perfect material for embroidery and applique, something like the island inspired skirts I've been making. 

This dress is something of a mixed technique project.  It includes machine applique, hand guided applique and decorative stitching.  The basic design is a flowering vine that accents the main features of the dress, curling along the front and neck openings.  The vine itself is far to big for machine applique, so it's hand guided applique.  The skirt section and the top section of the vine are each a single piece of fabric, bonded to the blue fabric and then stitched with a close spaced zig-zag stitch.

The leaves and flowers are machine applique with embroidered accents.  Both designs are from Embroidery Library.  The leaf is here and the flower is here.  The colors for the flower were chosen to contrast nicely with the blue and the green and also to go with a bracelet I wanted to wear with the dress, which has lapis lazuli, peridot, and garnet.   Each of the leaves and flowers were individually placed.  The leaves have stems.  The flowers do not, so I added those before placing the flowers.

Finally, I added decorative stitching to the hem of the dress and the sleeves.  It's a built in decorative stitch on my machine.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine.