Romantic Fancy

Romantic Fancy, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Look, this is that same block, isn't it? (See two entries down.) Even the name is similar.

(Added: I am dumb. That pattern was published in 2002, so presumably this quilt was made from that pattern.)

Quilt above made by Diane Glover; shown at the 2004 Woodlands Quilt Show.

Trouble at Gee's Bend

Oh, this is sad. (But not terribly surprising, unfortunately.) The latest in what is apparently a series of lawsuits against the Arnett brothers alleges that two 100-year-old quilts were stolen from a Gee's Bend resident.

(Found via Sonji Says.)

More watercolor

The (award-winning) quilt above is by KarenD, who - not really coincidentally - just wrote an entry about her watercolor period and this quilt in particular. (This picture is one I took when I went to visit her.) I noticed that she called her entry "Colorwash Quilts" - which may get at the difference of opinion that there seems to be between me and everybody else on this subject. Because to my mind, "watercolor" quilts are not exactly the same thing as "colorwash" quilts, even though I know most of the time they are used interchangeably. Sometimes my brain just refuses to work the same way as everybody else's! I guess I would say that "watercolor" is a somewhat more broad term, and that's why I said this sunflower quilt qualifies to me as watercolor, even though nobody seems to agree with me. (See the comments to that entry for the discussion.)


On another sort-of-related subject, Joan of Lazy Girl Designs wrote an entry about the NQA show, and that got me thinking that I really need to start paying attention to where the quilt shows are up north, considering that we go to see my in-laws in Ohio at least once a year. Sooner or later I might be able to coordinate one of these trips with a show. NQA was in Columbus this year - which is where we normally fly to - but it's the show that moves around, right? So it won't be there next year. -- Ooh, no, it is in Columbus again - did they change that policy? Hmm, well, anyway, I will have to bear that in mind next time we start talking about visiting Rob's parents. June 19-21 are the dates for 2008, so it says. (I could also think about going to IQF in Chicago in the spring - but since a lot of the quilts in the show there seem to be the same ones that are in Houston in the fall, that makes it a little less intriguing to me.) Food for thought, in any case.

Blind Man's Fancy

Quilt from December 2002 QNM, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

"Fancy This" made by Linda Cordell (and friends) of Arlington TX.

I was skimming through an old issue of Quilter's Newsletter (Dec 2002, to be exact) and I found this quilt, which I love. The odds that I ever would make it are very, very slim, though. Too many tiny triangles. Hmm, maybe I could come up with something similar but simpler? (I will probably come up with some other idea that's completely different by the time I end up making my pink quilt, in any case.)

Shades of Captain Nemo

Shades of Captain Nemo, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I always liked this quilt a lot. I guess other people did too, because it won Viewer's Choice at our guild's quilt show - that must've been in 1998, because it also was at IQF in 1998. Made by Carolyn Allison.

(I couldn't've told you its name if I didn't have it written down somewhere - I always thought of it as the Squid Quilt!)

Mom

Jaws!, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

It occurs to me that I have talked about my mother an awful lot, and you have seen her quilts but you may never have seen my mom herself. So I have been scanning pictures again, and here she is. (Somewhere in Australia, to be exact, in 1993.)

In Remembrance of Nanny

In Remembrance of Nanny, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Nancy Rink, California. From IQF 2004.

I like album quilts that aren't quite traditional. Besides, this has great colors.

Kathryn's quilt

Kathryn's quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I just bought a lot of pink fabric from the Fat Quarter Shop, because I've still got it in my head to do another pink quilt. The quilt in my picture was my second quilt - like the first one, it was nine-patches - and it was made for the child of a college roommate. Reportedly Kathryn loved it dearly and carried it around for years - but apart from that I've never thought it was an entirely successful quilt. Kathryn may have been satisfied with it, but I wasn't. I've learned a lot about things like value and contrast since then. (Those fabrics that don't quite read pink bother me, particularly.) Also, this was the first quilt that I chose the fabrics for, and it's a little too matchy for my taste nowadays. I really am a scrap quilter to the core.

More sunflowers

Soleil II, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

"Soleil II" made by Elaine Quehl of Orleans, Ontario; shown in the judged show (category: Mixed Technique) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

There are a lot of sunflower quilts, aren't there? I like the background of this one, in particular.

In Celebration of the Doll

In Celebration of the Doll, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

And now for something completely different: a doll. But a mermaid doll! which is way cool. Maker unknown; from the exhibit "In Celebration of the Doll 2006" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Sunflower

Sunflower, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Vanessa Brisson of Pennsylvania. From the exhibit "In Full Bloom II: Floral Quilts Honoring Helen Pearce O'Bryant" at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

We've sort of had an ongoing discussion about watercolor quilts lately, so here's something that's sort of generally in the watercolor genre, but that's a little bit different. (How do you define "watercolor quilts" anyway?)

Blocks & layouts

jacob's ladder?, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I was trying to figure out the name of this block - it's not a Jacob's Ladder, is it? I think Jacob's Ladder looks sort of like this but is more complex. Anyway, this seems to be the block in the Victorian Ladies quilt. (Look a couple of entries down.) And then it is sashed with the same kind of block that you would use in a Storm at Sea Quilt - which is what I think of as a Peaky and Spikeblock - and that's what makes the stars. And the ladies themselves are the sashing squares. Does that make sense?

(I don't know if you normally do it differently if you're making a Storm at Sea quilt, but the way I know to make a block like the sashing blocks is to use a tri-recs tool. Which is what I used for the units in my quilt, too, but they are an alternate block rather than a sashing there.)


Aside: Does anybody have EQ6? Is it notably more user-friendly than EQ5? Because I played around with this in EQ5, and I did get as far as making this little block, but I couldn't figure out how to put the block into a layout, and I ended up just getting frustrated. Which is pretty much what happens every time I try to use it.

Sorry, you can't have it.

Etsy purchase, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I found this on Etsy - the maker called it "tribal art" but it looks awfully much like a quilt block to me - but there was only one and I already bought it. (She has a lot of other cute things, which is actually how I got there in the first place, but there was only one of those, unless she has more that she just hasn't put online yet.)

Victorian Ladies

Victorian Ladies (detail), originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above by Angelique Hartman. This picture is from Mayfest 1998, but I know this quilt was also in an IQF exhibit at some point since then.

This pattern interests me, because it is similar but not identical to the Faceted Jewels pattern I used for this quilt - it's a two-block quilt and I guess the alternate blocks are different. OR... now that I look at it, I think it may be put together very differently. I'm going to have to look at this some more later, when I have time.

Added: There's a picture of (almost) the full quilt here.

Watercolor excess

Another "unknown" quilt from 1998, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I tend to avoid talking about quilts I don't like, but... well, I won't say I hate this one, but it's a bit much, isn't it?

Rainbow Canyon

Rainbow Canyon, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Grace Errea of Laguna Niguel CA; shown in the judged show (category: Art-Naturescapes) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

We were talking about the fractured quilts a few entries back, and this is really another example, although once again, the quilter has adapted this one in her own way. Grace Errea is another quilter that I've become a bit of a fan of. I particularly like this quilt (and it was at Tactile Architecture last year, so I took another picture) - and when I searched my tags, it turned out that this quilt is also hers.

I googled Grace Errea to see if she had a website, and apparently she doesn't - but I did find a couple more of her quilts via sophie junction, who furthermore took even more pictures at NQA than I took at IQF last year, which makes me feel a little less like a crazy person! (Which frankly, I've been wondering a little bit about lately.)

Chinese Coins

Chinese Coins, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I don't know for sure that "Chinese Coins" is the name of this quilt, but it's what popped into my head when I looked at the picture, so it might be. (Or might not, you never know about my memory.) I don't know who made it, either - this is another one of those 1998 pictures, from back before I ever knew I would be putting all these pictures up on the web for all to see someday. Anyway, I like this. Sort of Chinese Coins in watercolor. And then those diagonal lines going across it, to make it more interesting.

Watercolor was very big in 1998. I think I have a couple more pictures of watercolor quilts that haven't made their way to Flickr yet.

Unknown IQF quilt, 1998

Unknown IQF quilt, 1998, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

My mom and I were both really fascinated with this quilt, I remember - the way it combines watercolor and applique to produce a really realistic quilt.

Lilacs and albums

Unknown IQF quilt, 1998, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

The Calico Cat pointed out that those are not grapes around the edge of this quilt, those are lilacs. You might have to click over to flickr to a bigger version to be able to tell, but she's definitely right. Those are not little circles, they are tiny, tiny flowers, every one of them. Amazing work.

By the way, some of the pictures that I thought were from 2003 turned out to be from 1998. (I figured this out because I had some of the same pictures in an album, and for once I had actually labeled them.) Others said 10-30-03 on the picture, so we can be pretty sure that those were indeed from IQF 2003. At least one was from 2002, though, and no telling what other years are represented in there. Apparently Mama just took all her quilt pictures and stuck them willy-nilly in an album, at some point.


In other news, I am getting really desperate to be able to quilt. Desperate, I tell you. I am going to have to figure something out so I can!

Hawaiian-style

Unknown IQF quilt, 2003, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I suppose this wouldn't be considered an "authentic" Hawaiian-style quilt, would it? I mean, it ignores several of the rules as I understand it - chiefly, that the applique is supposed to be all one piece, and thus all one color, as well. This one has, what, two main pieces of applique? The center is one piece and the edges are another, as far as I can tell. And of course the pink flowers each add more pieces. But that said, I really like it a lot. The end result is beautiful.

American Dream

American Dream - Sakaguchi, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

This is Japanese baseball player Hideo Nomo, for those of you who aren't the kind of baseball fan who would automatically know these things. (Nomo has a very distinctive pitching style; I looked at it and immediately knew who it was, even though it's been a while since I saw him pitch.)

It's a great depiction of Nomo, but one thing that struck me about it is the background - it's a very simple scrap background, but it's amazingly effective as a stand-in for a crowd of people. I wouldn't've thought it would work, but it does.

The quilt above is "American Dream - Hideo Nomo" by Fusako Sakaguchi. This was (I believe) part of a special exhibit at IQF 1998.

Mom's pictures

Unknown IQF quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I uploaded some pictures of my mother's that seem to be from IQF 2003. More wil be forthcoming. I always think it's interesting that there's very little overlap between my pictures and my mother's - maybe 10% or so. She took pictures of applique quilts and especially Baltimore albums and Hawaiian-style quilts, and she was also partial to landscape quilts. Whereas I am more prone to take pictures of things that have bright colors and geometric patterns (for an example, see the entry below) - it's a wonder there's any overlap at all, isn't there?

Little Cities

Little Cities, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Have I never put this picture up here before? This is by Kathy York of Austin, who has been doing the greatest stuff the last few years. I have become a big fan.

"Little Cities" - winner of 1st prize in the category Art-Abstract, Large at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Ireland

Ireland, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Marianne Haeni; from the exhibit "Hands All Around XXI" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Here's a quilt I had forgotten all about. "Hands All Around" - which is an exhibit of international quilts - always has good stuff, anyway.

Suite for Springtime

Suite for Springtime, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Marianne Haeni; from the exhibit "Hands All Around XXI" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival. Part of a set of 5 panels.

Hey, it's still technically spring, although it's starting to feel like summer here. (I actually stuck this picture in my Summer quilts set on flickr, anyway, because it has more intense colors than you usually associate with spring.)

One more

Galveston Bay Blues, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

"Galveston Bay Blues" made by Jenny Chiovaro et al. of Galveston, Texas; shown in the judged show (category: Group) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

This quilt also won a ribbon at Paducah (as I mentioned in my very grouchy entry on that show). I thought I had a picture of it but I guess I was looking in the wrong place before!

I Must Be Hexed

I Must Be Hexed, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Cheryl See of Ashburn, Virginia; shown in the judged show (category: Handmade) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

There are so many great quilts from IQF that I haven't gotten around to posting yet! Look at this one!

A Little Illusion I

A Little Illusion I, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Gloria Hansen of Highstown NJ; shown in the judged show (category: Miniature) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.