Quilt Market: the Booths

What is Quilt Market without the vendors and their fabulous booths? There's everything from the simple, clean design to over the top extravagance. Much the same as with the quilt exhibition, it's hard to take in all the details of booth after booth. Here are some of my favorites.

First up is the Westminster booth along with some of their individual designer booths.
Westminster/Free Spirit is one of my favorite manufacturers. Kaffe Fassett, Amy Butler, Anna Marie Horner, Tula Pink, Joel Dewberry . . . what more can I say?

Amy Butler's booth showcasing her new line Hapi

Heather Bailey's booth showcasing Lottie Da.  The butterfly is a framed pieced quilt. Fantastic detail.

Anna Marie Horner's booth showcasing her new True Colors and Dowry.
I love how the inspiration wall blends right into the quilt design.

Art Gallery also had eye-catching booths completely filled with color down to the tiniest of details. Love their fabrics too . . . especially their new basic lines.

Pat Bravo's newest collection Rapture will be in stores soon.

I can't wait for Jeni Baker's new line Dreamin' Vintage which comes out in April.
I'm really liking this line a lot. Might go really well with the vintage sheets I've been collecting.

Art Gallery's newest design Frances Newcombe's booth. She won the Best New Exhibitor Award.

Angela Walters was such a sweetheart and her quilt was absolutely stunning.
You can see more info on how she did it here. It's  worth taking a close-up look.

And just a few of the other amazing fun booths . . .

Who knew batting by itself could be so interesting?  Amazing textures on their batting tower.

Just a very small portion of the very blue booth by Michael Miller. This table setting was gorgeous.

Hope you liked my little Market tour. Wish I had even more detail shots as well as better photos.
As I've said before . . . so overwhelming it was hard to take it all in.

QuiltCon

Three quilts entered.
Two quilts accepted !
One quilt wins an award ! ! !

Rhythm & Blues won 3rd Place in the Use of Negative Space category sponsored by Michael Miller Fabrics!  I can't begin to tell you how excited I am.

I've seen lots of pictures on Instgram and there are some amazing quilts in the show. I don't really have a lot of quilt show credentials under my belt so this is all rather new and most definitely an honor considering all the great talent out there.   : )

If only I was in Austin right now to see them in person.  : (  
I didn't even know which quilt won what award until just now when the winners were finally posted online. For a complete listing of the winners go here.

I made 2 new quilts to enter in QuilCon. Both were based on concepts that had been in my sketchbook for ages. Seemed like a great opportunity to finally bring those concepts to life.

The first quilt was "Rhythm & Blues".
The inspiration for this quilt initially came from studying the design elements in woven interior decorating fabrics. I was interested in the interweave of colors that occur within the strong horizontal format of the weave. As the idea progressed, I became more intrigued with the vertical movement that could be created as different colored groups of lines interact with each other. The quilt morphed into a graphic representation of the sound bars that move up and down on digital recording equipment and "Rhythm & Blues" was born. I have plans to explore other versions of this basic design later this year.

I quilted it with horizontal lines. A single line in the white bars, double lines in most of the blues and triple lines in the darkest blue. It made for a lot of starting and stopping, which is an area where my skills need improvement.

The second quilt I made was "Mondrian Unleashed".
"Mondrian Unleashed" was inspired by the paintings of Piet Mondrian, an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement of the early 1900's. He simplified compositions into vertical and horizontal lines and used primary colors plus black and white. I was intrigued by his compositions and the limited placement of color and initially planned to reproduce this structure using print fabrics in place of solid colors. As the concept evolved though, I broke free of the rigid horizontal and vertical structure in favor of diagonal lines. The placement of color within the spaces created by the intersection of lines falls in a way that intentionally leads your eye through the quilt.  I have other color options I'd like to explore with this one as well.

I quilted random diagonal lines all over the surface that echo the randomness of the quilt design.

The third quilt I entered was "Zebras in My Garden" made using my Facets pattern. While this quilt wasn't accepted, it's actually my favorite in many ways simply because of the use of color and Kaffe prints.

Making these quilts was a great learning experience. One of the main things I realized about my personal quilt journey is that the design process is what I love the most. Guess that's why I have so many sketches and so many "yet to be made" quilts. I really enjoy the compositional aspect of designing and working with color. And while it was a lot of fun to work with mostly solids, I realize my first love is prints and riots of color. I'll still design and use solids frequently because there are just so many delicious colors available, but I'll never give up on prints . . . especially Kaffe.

I encourage all of you to go out on a limb and enter a competition this year. If you aren't accepted into one show it certainly doesn't mean you won't be accepted into a different show. Sometimes it just means finding the right fit for your work. Be confident in your ideas, improve the skills that need work and let the rest of the world see what you do.

I hope QuiltCon is a grand success. I can't imagine that it won't be. 
To all of you lucky enough to go, I'm quite jealous but hope you had a blast!!