Quiltus Interruptus

Miss me?  My sincere apologies for leaving you hanging.  It’s been busy over here at Cozyegg central, and unfortunately there’s been little needlework happening too.  But, back to the good stuff.  When last we met I promised more photos of the lovely pieces I got to see at the Dallas Quilt Show and boy, do I have a ton of things to share!

I decided to volunteer at the show this year.  I’m not a member of the Dallas quilt guild, but am a member of the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild and I thought that volunteering would be fun.  I signed up for two shifts (two hours each) and spent the first shift at volunteer check-in and the second shift at the door prize raffle table.  When I completed my shifts I had lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the show.

The Cloth Pocket is a great quilt shop that carries a ton of modern fabrics in Austin, Texas.  They came to the modern guild last year and did a trunk show/pop up shop that was so fun.  I was happy to see their booth at the show again this year.  I’m completely enamored with this Lion quilt by Violet Craft and this version of it is stunning!  I totally want to do it in these colors!!

One of the other booths I spent a good bit of time in was Traditional Primitives by Missie Carpenter.  She was demonstrating her appliqué technique and had some great tools she offers as well.  I really want to give her methods a try!  One of the quilts patterns I completely fell in love with was her Gardens of a King.  It is stunning in person!!!

Here’s a closeup.  Isn’t it gorgeous!  This one is definitely on my wishlist!

While shopping the vendor booths and watching technique demos is a lot of fun, the best part of the show is the quilts themselves!  These are just a few of the ones that caught my eye!

I love this Moda Building Blocks quilt and have the pattern to make it someday.  I’ve seen it done in prints and in solids and both ways it is equally beautiful.  There were a couple of these at the show, but this one was my favorite!

Opposite end of the spectrum – this sampler quilt in civil war repros was a stunner!

I loved this diamond quilt.

Done in batiks.

And I can’t resist a hexy quilt.  I love the layout of the rings.  Lots of people saw this one from afar and thought it was all one piece of fabric…but no, it was all EPP hexagons.

Here’s a closeup.  What I love about this is that it’s totally scrappy.  Fantastic!

I think every year I go to the quilt show I fall in love with and take a million photos of a Phebe quilt (designed by Di Ford).  I don’t know what it is about this quilt that draws me in, but I just adore it.

Maybe it’s the fuzzy sheep?

Or maybe it’s the fantastic borders?

Either way, I’m totally adding this one to my to do list.

I’m always impressed with those quilts that have such masterful quilting that from far away it’s hard to tell that at least 50% of the quilt’s design is actually quilting and not piecing.  Like this one, that was called Stars on Mars.  I love the color palette.

Here’s the closeup – all of that intricate quilting in white brings a whole new dimension to the piece, doesn’t it?  Just amazing.

More appliqué that I love.  That blue background really made this one an eye-catcher!

Tesselations by Alison Glass made by a fellow modern quilt guild member.  Love this one so much and especially love her use of solids and prints.

Another great modern quilt.  I love that each year I seem to see more and more modern quilts at the show.

This original design wholecloth quilt was the Best in Show quilt.  Pictures do not do this justice.

This is another one where the quilting plays a huge part in the design, adding texture and interest.  I especially love that fern frond looking border.

A beautiful Americana quilt by a friend of mine.  I love love love the muted color palette.

And back to modern.  This quilt was really interesting from afar, but even more impressive up close.  This year’s theme was “Words and Letterforms” and this quilt is a perfect representation of that theme but you have to get closer to see why.

Closeup…

I wanted to include the description of what the quilter did to create this one.  Amazing!

Loved this modern piece with the straight line quilting.

Another civil war repro sampler.

Love this one with Bonnie & Camille fabrics.

And this Swoon was made by a good friend of mine.  She combined solids with Liberty-esque prints.  I love love love the little stars as the cornerstones in the sashing.  This quilt is HUGE too!  Each of those Swoon blocks is 24″ square!

The quilting was perfectly suited to the pattern too!

This was a super fun quilt, made entirely of triangles.  The background is really blown out in this photo, unfortunately.

Here you can see that background a little better.  And the whole thing was quilted with just wavy lines!

Another quilt by a fellow modern guild member.  This is her Chic Shells quilt that was a workshop the ladies from Sew Kind of Wonderful taught at our guild.

Don’t you love the negative space quilting too?

Love this red and white feathered star quilt.  Red and white quilts may be my favorite.

Two Jo Morton Little Women quilts.

One of these days I’ll get around to making the Jo quilts in my stash!

And I was so excited to see a Project of Doom quilt in person!  If you don’t know about this quilt it is a free Harry Potter bookshelf paper-pieced pattern by Jennifer Ofenstein and published on her website Fandom in Stitches.  She also has a Facebook group that was started for the 2015 quiltalong.  I really really want to make one of these.  I love that the bookshelf is basically totally customize-able.  You can choose which blocks to include and how you want to arrange them.  There are also fun extras you can put next to the bookshelf like Dobby or Harry’s Nimbus 2000.  You can see there’s books galore, a cauldron, the sorting hat and Crookshanks, Harry’s glasses, Neville’s toad, a box of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and even Hedwig.  I spent a long time looking at this one!

The Monster Book of Monsters was made with craft fur, which was awesome.  You can see some of the book titles here too.

I loved the quotes the quilter included as framed pieces next to the bookshelf.

And the book on top with another quote.

So, next to the Steampunk Baltimore quilt I shared in my last post that was my favorite at the show, the Project of Doom quilt was probably number 2 and then here is my third favorite…Tula Pink’s Butterfly quilt made with her Acacia fabrics.  Gorgeous and the first one I’ve seen in person.

It’s basically a sampler quilt in the shape of a butterfly.  That Tula is so clever!  I really wasn’t in love with this quilt when it first came out, mostly because I’m not a huge fan of purple and pink.  But when I saw it done in her Eden fabrics I had to have it!  So, one of these days I’ll get mine started.  But this really is a stunner in person.  Beautiful!

Another fellow guild member.  This quilt was from a Round Robin the guild did.  She had been collecting polka dot fabrics and so that’s what she requested in her quilt.  She made the center block and then each member of the round robin added a border.  Love how it turned out!

Another guild member’s quilt.  This one I believe was from a bee the guild did a while back.  I just love how these Modrian-inspired blocks look like Rubik’s Cubes.  And that neon pink is so fab.  But the best part…

She quilted 80’s references into the quilt – bands, movies, etc.  Love it!

Another guild member, the same that did the Alison Glass Tesselation quilt.  Love this modern log cabin and the trapunto quilting she did that meets the show theme – not as easy to see in the photo as you can in person, but it says “Today was a good day”.

Awesome, right?!

More quilts in the show theme.  This one is so cool and is done in flannels.

Here’s the explanation of her quilt – isn’t that creative?!

Another show theme quilt, with runes.

A Morse code alphabet.

Love this one!  It was made by another modern guild member during one of the in-town sewing retreats I attended.

This Clockwork Orange quilt was made by the same quilter that did the Modrian inspired quilt.  We had a challenge at the guild to choose a title of a book, movie, tv show, etc. and make something (didn’t have to be a quilt) that represented that title and then the members would guess what it is.  I love this quilt.  You know immediately that it’s A Clockwork Orange.

A closer view of the quote.

And look at the amazing graffiti quilting she did!

Show theme quilt and it makes me laugh.

Also show theme.  I really liked this one too.  She recreated her fingerprint and in between the whorls she added quotes that she loved and were inspirational to her.

Whew!  I hope you enjoyed seeing the quilts from the show, even if this post was much delayed.  Now I’m feeling like I need to go do some sewing of my own!  For those of you in the US, I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

I am grateful for creative inspiration.