Northwest Quilters Quilt Show

It was my great pleasure to attend the Northwest Quilters 38th annual quilt show this past Friday.  The theme for this years show was "A Festival of Quilts".  

There are two fairly large quilt shows in the Portland area each year.  This first one is put on by the Northwest Quilters guild, whereas the show that occurs every September is a sponsored show.  I don't know if this is always the case, but my observation is that the show in March seems to have more traditional quilts (although not exclusively traditional), while the September show has more art quilts.  Both shows have a good assortment of vendors, and it's always fun for me to see both.  

My daughter-in-law, Mae, went with me.  Usually I go to these shows alone since all my quilting friends are people I know from blogs.  It was nice to have a flesh and blood companion along with me.  Mae is an excellent artist.  She paints with oils, but that certainly doesn't cover all of her creative and artistic endeavors.  I bring this up because between the two of us we focused on different parts of the quilts.  Mae was quite in tune to the textures and colors, while I was focused on the stitching and piecing.  Together we made a dynamic exploratory duo as we made our way around the show.  It was a lot of fun.

When I considered writing this post, I was thinking I'd been distracted by having Mae with me and I hadn't taken very many pictures.  Then when I went to take them off my camera, I had 52 images.  Ha!  I wonder how many I would have taken if I'd been less distracted.  In any case, there's nothing to fear.  I have lots and lots of quilts to show you.  As usual, I'll show them to you in batches so you don't hurt your eyes looking at them.

This first one was made by a quilter after my own heart.  

The details in this quilt were just precious.  The cat's whiskers were three dimensional, and if you notice, there are pads on the cat's foot.  Also, the fabric used for the chair was upholstery fabric.  So cute.

I loved the colors in this next quilt.

What really caught my eye was the raw-edged applique, which is done similarly to the way my Checkerboard Flowers quilt was done.  I found this reassuring on many levels.  While it's difficult to see in this image, the leaves were three dimensional and stood out from the surface of the quilt.  Very pretty.

I loved the colors in the next two quilts.  This first one was all done in pretty batiks.

This next one caught my eye because of the colors, but also because of the design.  When I was a little girl, I lived in Hawaii for a few years.  When I was in the fourth grade one of my teachers taught us how to fold Origami cranes, and I've always had a soft spot for Origami.  I just loved the design of this quilt, and the details were wonderful.

They are flat against the surface of the quilt, and I'm thinking they are paper-pieced, but they looked for all the world like folded Origami cranes.  A very nice piece of work.

This next one was striking on many levels.  I love the colors, but I like the design as well.  The quilting was very interesting.  Mae and I both decided we liked the straight line meandering with squared corners.  I want to try that some time on the right quilt.

This is the last one I'll show you for today.  I loved the colors, and I'm realizing that I really like this deep blue and brick red/rust/bronze combination.  Also, I loved the pieced border on this quilt.

That's all I'll post for now.  Watch my blog for the next few days and I'll show you some more of my favorite quilts from the Northwest Quilters show.