JanMade

I went to the international quilt festival a couple weekends ago with my cousin.  It was the first time I’ve ever been to a quilt show and the amount of things to see was overwhelming.  The venue was huge and there were aisles and aisles of booths for shopping with anything quilt-related you can think of.  I got to try a long arm quilting machine.  I want one so much!  I can’t even begin to tell you how much easier it was to free motion quilt on the machine.   Quilting a quilt is definitely my least favorite part of the quilting process…its so hard to do on a regular sewing machine, I get really frustrated and have never been  completely happy with how it turns out.  The long arm machine is so fun to use, and the results are awesome.  Its a shame they cost thousands of dollars, and I live in a one bedroom apartment.  As you can see, they are huge.

long arm machine

At the quilt show, I came across a booth with all these little 16″x24″ art quilts of dogs.  Of course, I was in love.  They were selling the patterns, and surprisingly she had a papillon pattern!  I had to buy it, I’m excited about making a Foxy quilt.  I think it will be so fun, and it will be my first time paper piecing, so a small project will be good for learning.  If you click on the picture of the papillon, you will be able to go to the designer, Sharon Malec’s website.  She has patterns for over 100 dog breeds, and other animals too.

So cute. Can't wait to make one that looks like Foxy.

I also loved the quilt gallery.  They were all beautiful.  A quilt show has a lot of rules.  Don’t touch anything is probably the biggest one, but also you are only allowed to take pictures of quilts that do not have a “no photography” sign next to them.  Unfortunately there were not many I was allowed to take a picture of, but here are some pictures of some amazing work that I was able to photograph.  Seeing them up close was so amazing, the quilting and piecing skills these men and women have are so incredible.  It was really inspirational to see these beautiful quilts.  It really inspired me.  I finally started on my “thank you” quilt for my friend Christine for making the logo for my etsy shop.  She wanted pink and orange, so I really hope she likes what I’ve been working on, I’m really happy with it so far.  Anyway, here are some of the amazing quilts from the 2009 International Quilt Festival:

The fabric for this was handpainted.

this quilt blew my mind. the detail is amazing

based on Klimt's The Kiss. Loved the gold lame.

definitely more traditional, but i liked the kalidescope effect

I thought this was really modern and fresh using the shirting materials

Chicago Landscape! The detail was incredible.

a close up of a very complicated quilt, each tiny piece there was sewn together

a beautiful antique quilt from the 1850s. I love the eagle and vine motif. All done by hand!

they called this a variation on a dresden plate. I love the flowers and on point blocks.

i love these birds. and the hand quilting on it is incredible.