Vermont Quilt Festival, Part 1

I mentioned in my last post (here) that I was heading up to Burlington, Vermont for the Vermont Quilt Festival.  I've been wanting to go to this event for YEARS.  Finally, everything fell into place and This Was The Year To Go.

It was, in a word, AWESOME.  An outstanding experience in every way.

Since I rarely have the patience to read long blog posts, I'm going to section my trip report into a few shorter, and hopefully easier to digest, posts.

Let's start with a little quilty eye candy:

All of the quilts were identified this way, with a number, a title, and a brief description.  The number indicates what type of quilt it is:  in this case, a pieced, bed size quilt.

This quilt is "Juiced at the Juice Bar" by Patty Gerz.

The blue ribbon on this quilt is no surprise.  It's by Joan Dorsay, and it was pieced and quilted by hand.  It was categorized as a mixed media wall quilt.

Here's a detail shot.  Look at the dimension on those flowers!

What was amazing about this quilt is what you can't really see in the picture-- lavish quilting, with black thread, in the black fabric area of the quilt.  I don't care whether you're quilting by hand or machine, it seems like it would be nearly impossible to see well enough.  (This quilter overcame the challenge admirably!).

Quilts in all styles were well represented. Here's a  detail of a lavishly embellished crazy quilt.

As you might expect from a show focusing on New England area quilters, there were a lot of traditional style quilts.

But there were some modern ones as well!

I loved the design of this wall hanging.

A whole quilt of rainbow colored George.

I loved this one.













If I had to choose a favorite, it would have to be this one:

I first saw this quilt online last August, when Generation Q magazine posted it on their Facebook page.  Then I read a blog post about it written by the longarm quilter.  And then I wrote about it, and how inspiring I found the pictures (read the post here).

What a joyous surprise to see it in person!

It's called "McTangerine Rose", made by Lynn Droege, and longarm quilted by Lisa Sipes.

You can read Lisa's blog post about it here.

Wow

Stay tuned for more fun from the VQF:  my fabulous free-motion class, a little fabric shopping, and lots more!