Denver National Quilt Festival 2013

Enchanted Garden
Hand stipple quilting - millions of stitches

I enjoyed the 2013 Denver National Quilt Festival today and thought you might like to see a few of the quilts.

This is the detail of "Enchanted Garden".  It was one of the few hand stitched quilts; hand applique and hand quilted.

Measuring 81" x 80.5"

A well deserved Best Of Show Winner

Enchanted Garden was made by Cathleen Miller of Albuquerque NM.

Best Of Show

She wrote:
Seven years ago I moved from Wisconsin to New Mexico (The Land of Enchantment).  Being surrounded by artists gave me the confidence to create my own designs.  Being surrounded by sand gave me the confidence to work with bold colors.  The seven layers of bold colored applique in "Enchanted Garden" represent those seven years.  Hand quilting gives me the most pleasure.

This one is for my friends who are working in solids.
Shirley Gigi of Colorado Springs created, "Second Encounter"

Best Wall Quilt Winner

It measures 47.5 x 35.75

She wrote:
This quilt is an interpretation of mid-century art.  In addition to geometric forms I included transparency where shapes overlap.  Color decisions were made as I went along creating surprising effects as the piece unfolded.  Straight lines, angles and circles in piecing and quilting emphasize the geometric theme throughout.
All machine work - original design

The First Place Traditional award went to joint Colorado team,  Sandi Fruehling & Kathy Emmel of Aurora.
90" x 90" Tribute To Rose

Machine Embroidered, Long Arm Quilted, Original Design

Inspired by a quilt title "Indiana Wreath" designed by Rose Kretsinger in the 1930's.  This modern quilt interprets the hand appliqued swags using commercial machine embroidery designs - elements were eliminated and re-arranged.  Sandi's long arm quilting is much the same style and scale as the original feathers in the center of the quilt.

Tribute To Rose detail 

How about some silk?

Letitia Ching from San Francisco won Third Place - Traditional for "Golden Mums"     64" x 63.5"

This original design was machine pieced, hand appliqued and Long Arm Quilted by Laurie Grant.

Letitia wrote:
Designing and creating an original 4-block quilt was on my long list of quilts I've always wanted to make.  For the flowers, I chose the chrysanthemum design based on ancient Chinese embroideries.  Since I already had a box of silk fabrics with some larger pieces, I decided to use ONLY the fabrics I had on hand for the quilt top.  This was a challenge to myself as well as trying to be practical.



One of the special exhibits was "Quilted Pages - A Storytellers Quilts"  Allyson Allen
These are just a few pictures from numerous quilts in her exhibit.

"Mom's Yo Yo Quilt"
1994

Over 2,400 yo yo's in assorted cotton and linen from the 1960's and 70's.
Originally created for the round bed.

"Harriet Powers' 1898 "Pictorial Quilt" Replica
2012  by Allyson Allen
Machine pieced and quilted

The original hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Art.






Back to the show in another aisle...

Birds In Hand
80" x 60"
Mandie Burrell, of King George VA
Machine pieced Long Arm Quilted

"Birds in Hand" is my first show quilt I constructed and quilted on my own.  I challenged myself to quilt every inch of this quilt with and intricate eye-catching design.













I did a shift selling tickets for the 2013 Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum raffle quilt.

You can read more about the quilt HERE, and see a better picture.

Many of the fabrics in the quilt are from past RMQM lines.

It was fun to meet so many quilters from all over the world as they bought tickets in support of the museum!

I wish I could put all the pictures here - there were many, many beautiful quilts!

The show runs through the weekend if you are in the area - so there's still time to get there....

Thanks for stopping by!