Mother Earth and her Children

Mother Earth and her Children (detail), originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Sieglinde Schoen Smith of Carlisle, Pennsylvania; winner of Best of Show (and a $10,000 prize) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival. (Entered in the category Art-Whimsical.)

I was looking at my "recent activity" page on flickr - it shows comments and what pictures people have favorited and so forth, it's always interesting to check - and one of the pictures of this quilt popped up. There are a bunch of pictures of this quilt starting here. At quilt festival last fall, I kept taking more pictures of it every time I went by. I can't say that I was all that impressed by it the first time I looked at it, but the more I looked the more impressed I got. The quilter was there, off & on, for one thing, and she showed the book the design came from - it was an old children's book, I believe she said she had it when she was a child. And she was very emphatic about the fact that every bit of the work in this was done by hand. Be sure and look at all the detail pictures if you have a chance, because the workmanship is really wonderful.

Carolyn started a Flickr pool for quilt festival pictures. Several people have already been adding stuff, so check it out!