Just got back from the quilt show in Pensacola Florida. This was my first quilt show since I have started quilting myself. There were lots of beautiful quilts, of course, and I got to fiddle around with high-end Bernina sewing machines, and the whole experience was very pleasant.
I learned plenty, too, mostly in the way of refining my own taste and raising my goals. As usual, I always prefer the very traditional quilts. I absolutely admire and have the highest regard for the beauty and quality of work of every ultra-modern quilt I saw there, but they do not inspire me to attempt to emulate them. The traditional ones do.
I was very inspired by a scrappy, pastel, bed-sized quilt. Simple Nine Patch alternating with plain blocks; about 5-6" blocks. (I always carry a tape measure in my purse and am fussing at myself now for not taking it out. Proportion is so important.) All prints; no solids. The prints (say, about twenty or thirty of them) were all very traditional floral, from small to large prints. About 80 percent of the fabrics were light pastels, the rest were medium to medium-dark colors. No primary colors. I made copious notes about how the quiltmaker had created such a beautiful harmony of color and had hand-quilted the blocks. I would love to make a quilt like that.
There was an antique quilt of Dresden Plate on display, which was just dreamy. The lightweight cotton "plates" were appliqued on muslin, and that muslin had aged beautifully. Such loosely woven muslin won't take too much rough handling, but it was obvious that nobody had ever abused this particular quilt. The puckers, the subtle tints, the three-dimensionalitly of this light-weight quilt increased the beauty of this quilt with age and proper care. Also, this was the first applique quilt I have affirmatively wanted to do and believed that I could do. I love the softness of the quilt I backed with muslin recently, and I will definitely continiue to use muslin for my personal quilts, including as a basis for applique on the front. I didn't notice any of the new show quilts using muslin on the front *or* the back today. I protest! I think there is still plenty of room for muslin in the quiltmaking vocabulary. It is soft, homey, and subtle, and it becomes more beautiful as it ages.
I was glad to see that the art of strip quiltmaking is alive and well and advancing. I find strip quilts uniquely beautiful, but I don't know whether I will ever aspire to one myself.
I was amazed at the beauty of some of the home SM and long-arm quilting. Certainly a high degree of skill is required for such machine quilting, but when I "test drove" a couple of high-end Berninas (with the BSR) and quilted a design I used on my last quilt, it was striking how much easier it was to move the quilt sandwich and how much more accurate/symmetrical my FMQ was with such a machine, than it is on my 1970s mechanical Necchi. So my conclusion was that the best machine-quilting requires the best machines, as well as the best quilters. Perhaps one day I will own such a machine . . . .
I felt much more drawn to the hand-quilting. There was a bed-sized Bear Paw, for example, that used a dark neutral background that "looked old" and which was hand-quilted with a traditional circular flower motif in lighter color, near-white, 50 weight thread. I want to hand-quilt such an effect. The huge all-white hand-quilted quilts were also stunning, of course -- the Mount Everest of hand AND machine quilting, AFAIC. I am definitely going to be devoting my energies to some hand-quilting in the near future. Maybe on the Pineapple Log Cabin of which I dream, or maybe when I try my hand at that Dresden Plate.
I saw only one Wild Goose Chase, which disappointed me, because I wanted to see how folks quilt that patchwork. The quilt was beautifully quilted with a long-arm, but half of it wasn't the look I wanted and the other half I would have to quilt by hand, which the client for the Wild Goose Chase quilts I'm working on right now will probably not want to pay for. I can imagine machining it, but I could also imagine going insane in the process.
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