Sunday, March 8, 2009

Somethings are just priceless

What a great day I had yesterday! It started around 8:30am when Ashley who was the first to arrive rang the doorbell. By a little after 9am there were 11 of us gathered in my living room. My family later referred to us as a gaggle of geese, but I am getting ahead of myself... :-).

Who and why were they here so early on a Saturday morning? Well Ashley, Jean, Lorraine, Brenda, Joanne, Aline, Anne, Cathy, Millie, Doris and I were all heading to QuiltFest NJ at the Edison Exhibit Center. A little over an hour's drive away, an easy trek. Lorraine made blueberry muffins for the ride and with the batch divided up in the 3 cars, off we went. And what a show it was!

Lorraine and I have done this show once before, but it was the first time the rest of the gang. We arrived just in time to attend a demo by Superior Threads on the different types of threads and their applications. I have been using Superior for about a year now and really love it! We spent about 4 hours walking around the show. As many know, I am a brights person. But the black and white exhibit was amazing. It really is amazing at how much depth you can see with varying shades of black and white. I think I spent almost way too much time enjoying these quilts :-). I was also amazed at the amount of quilting some artists are using in their pieces. Quilting is becoming a major piece of the quilt design, as is trapunto. I have recently been reading up on trapunto and even have a piece in the works that will include trapunto. I am sure mine will be nowhere near as beautiful as these pieces, but it does add wonderful depth to a piece. I will continue to practice :-)

Linda Hibbert's One Woman Show... OMG! She is just one phenomenal quilter! It was really interesting to see all the different techniques she uses, but I just loved her 'Dog Show' series and the horse galloping out of the valley. I loved the smaller quilted horses coming and going throughout the valley. Can you tell I enjoyed myself?? The quilts were amazing, the diverse exhibits were breathtaking and the balance between quilts and vendors was perfect.

It was really interesting to see how many quilts were painted pictures on fabric and then quilted. A part of me almost thinks these pieces should be judged in a separate category. Not that I am a purest. Believe me far from that... but a painter has much more control over their color than someone who uses commercial fabrics. Most of the winners in the 'best use of color
category were painted quilts.... seems sort of unfair to me, but hey who am I???

Afterward, we stopped for lunch and enjoyed a a light snack and our editorial commentary on the show. Once home, the glory of the day continued, as I enjoyed dinner with my kids who came home for spring break. One of my sons friends spent a few days with us and hence the dinner conversation about the gaggle of geese before 9 in the morning. Kids! You just got to love them.

A glorious day indeed.... friends and quilts, family and food.... perfect together!

(Sorry no pictures, can't believe I left my calendar at home)

1 comment:

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

I agree with you on the painted quilts. How can they judge that against a pieced quilt? they are apples and oranges as far as I'm concerned. Now if the judging is only on the quilting they could be in the same catagory, but use of color etc, different totally.