Thursday, May 24, 2007

Quilt Festival

I attended the opening ceremonies of the Waterloo County International Quilt Festival and arrived too late to get in on any of the appetizers and treats! The doors opened at 6:45 pm and by the time I arrived at 7:15 pm, only honeydew melon remained! But I was there in plenty of time for the handing out of the awards for the Ontario Juried Show. I wish more recipients would have been there to receive their awards, but now that the competition is open to entries from across Canada, I'm guessing there will be less award winning quilters able to attend. After the ceremony, we viewed the quilts which is always fun for me. I like to see how my opinions gel with the judges (or not!). I appreciate that this show uses different judges every year and you never know who they are until the opening ceremonies.
If you get a chance to see these quilts at RIM, see if you can tell which OJS quilt was my favorite. Here is a big clue....it is a bed size quilt made of 1" squares...yes...the whole thing was 1" squares! And the machine quilting was exquisitely done and perfect for the theme of the quilt. It was a lovely quilt from far away, but up close it takes my breath away! When the award winning quilt photos are posted on line, I'll post the link to my favorite. You can see the winning quilts from other years here....scroll to the bottom of the page for each years winners. Click here to see the winning quilts from 2004 which was the year that I was a juror and judge for this show. It was a very exciting, rewarding and exhausting experience.
Similar to opening night this year!
I was initially very excited to be in my first invitational quilt show called "Glitz Embellished Pieces" but on opening night, I must say that it was intimidating for me. Again most of the artists were not in attendance at the opening ceremonies since they are not from this area (or the province). Here is a photo of me beside my miniature embellished quilts. They do seem a bit lost in that huge arena full of bed size masterpieces, however I do take some pride in the fact that my quilts were the smallest ones in all of RIM park!

4 comments:

Patti said...

You should be very proud - they are beautiful little quilts! And what an honor to be invited to participate.

sewnut said...

Those mini-quilts are fabulous. Especially the New York Beauty Style.

quiltpixie said...

thanks for your comment on quiltpixie re my 365 day quilt. I'm not joining the yahoo group as I'm "cheating". I really don't want to take 365 days to make it, and am simply choosing random blocks to put some writing on (probably inspirational quotations or something). I'm using the base idea of a 365 day quilt, and that many patches, but wont be journalling. For me journalling is a longer entry, and more private than any quilt would lend itself to, and I don't want to have to think about something brief and "public" each day to write.... I might entertain it if I decide to do a gratitude each day, but for now I'm leaning towards quotations... :-)

Jeanne said...

Congratulations on having your miniature quilts displayed! It must have been very exciting for you. Wish I could have been there in person to see everything. Maybe next time.