International Quilt Festival - Part A

Wednesday, my first day at the International Quilt Festival this year, was a lot of fun. I took a class with Traci Bautisti, of Collage Unleashed fame, for a day of playing with fabric to create a wacky, large tote bag. Mine is not finished, actually not even half finished, but I see possibilities. The day began with us painting, stenciling, scraping and using Traci's full repetoire of fabric altering techniques. This took most of the morning. She brought an incredible amount of materials for us to use and was very generous in distirbuting them among the 20 or so stidents in he class. The afternoon was devoted to taking the manipulated fabric, adhering it to fusible web and adding them to our fabric scraps to create quilted exterior for our bags. Here is a look at some of the work done that day.

One woman in the class is someone I think any of us would like to spend some time with as she seemed to be very creative and wore it on her sleeve! She wore a wonderful fabric collaged jacket, pictured below, and, not pictured, is the bottom edge which was cut to echo the flowers ... a really beautiful treatment. In addition, she had painted her shoes to look like bare feet with painted toe nails. Her fabric choices were just as wild. I wish I had had a chance to spend some non-class time with her to hear about her creative process.

Wednesday evening was when the non-winners and the rest of us learned about the winners in all the quilt competitions. One of the quilts really impressed me for its originality. This quilt was created by piecing four large triangles of hand-dyed shaded fabric that was quilted into a one inch grid. The corners were appliqued with wonderful flowers and corner lace details. The applique was particularly spectacular as they were all created out of double layers of white fabric so that the base of dark gray fabric would not show through the designs. Here is a picture that I took trying to capture the beauty of this wonderful quilt. More winners can be seen at http://www.quilts.com/fqf07/enVivo/ .

Today, Thursday, was the first full day of shopping and, surprisingly I did not over indulge. One of the highlights of my day was meeting Mark Lipinsky of Quilter's Home fame. He autographed a copy of the magazine for me with the comment 'Quilt Nude Dude'. What a guy! If you are looking for a different kind of quilting magazine, check out Quilter's Home. I don't think you will be disappointed.