Whimsy

The Art-Whimsical category is sort of a grab-bag of things that don't always quite go together. I suspect that it's meant to be that way. Primarily it's a place to put the intentionally comical quilts - there are always quite a few of those, but then you also get the ones like the 1st-place winner which are belong more in a fantasy universe and less in a funny one:



I guess you could call this whimsical, but it's a very mainstream sort of whimsy, fairies and all that - I really think I would have put it in some other category. Mixed technique? Embellished? Somewhere like that.

"Woodland Story" (above) made by Elizabeth Dillinger of Ontario; winner of first prize in the category Art-Whimsical at IQF 2007.


Second prize is considerably more whimsical, although I wouldn't call it outright funny, either:



"Vertigo" (above) made by Kathy York of Austin, Texas; winner of second prize in the category Art-Whimsical at IQF 2007.


I really was going to make this longer and add more quilts but I am suddenly very sleepy. I will have to post the rest tomorrow.

Category winners

Here's a couple of quilts that won first place in their category that I especially liked.



"Chromatic Counterpoint" (above) made by Leslie Rego of Idaho; winner of first prize in the category Art-Abstract, Large at IQF 2007.




"Northern Lights" (above) made by Janet Fogg of Oregon; winner of first prize in the category Art-Pictorial at IQF 2007.

I have a couple of detail pictures of that quilt, too: here and here. (I especially like the way she quilted the snowflakes into the background.) I also have a couple more pictures of her quilts, which tend to feature these terrific pieced animals. She won Viewer's Choice last year for this kitty and a couple of years before that there was a bear - and it looks like this tree is also hers. Really nice work.

Loose Curves

This is kind of the most fabulous quilt ever. The black "background" is not part of the quilt at all, it's the curtain behind it. In fact, you could call this nine mini-quilts attached to a grid, rather than one big quilt. Although it's all attached to each other, of course.

Quilt (or quilts) above made by Dianne Hire of Maine; winner of second prize in the category Art-Abstract, Large in the judged show at the 2007 Houston International Quilt Festival.


Ooh, just made it in before the NaBloPoMo deadline!

IQF all year around

Did y'all catch that in addition to the fall IQF in Houston and the spring IQF in Chicago, there is now going to be a summer IQF in California? I wonder if they aren't going to overextend themselves at some point. Although I have gotten the impression that the Chicago show is virtually a repeat of the Houston one, so if they're just taking the same show and moving it around three times a year, I guess it might not be quite as much more work as it sounds like!

Here's a couple more quilts I really loved from the Pictorial category:



Quilt above made by Lee Brown of Kent, England.
(Note the way the arch in the foreground seems to glow.)



Quilt above made by Ann Fahl of Racine, Wisconsin.


And on an unrelated subject: I posted elsewhere a while back that I liked this thing but certainly wasn't willing to pay $175 for one, and a friend of a friend offered to knit one for me! (Which, y'know, is why I love Livejournal so much.) I'm paying for the (cashmere!) yarn but I still feel like I ought to make her something in return - maybe a little mini-wallhanging or something. I'll have to think it over.

The Usual Suspects

I've already seen pictures of this one in two or three places, but darnit, it's adorable. So here it is again. There's also a detail picture here.

Quilt above made by Nancy Brown of Oakland, California; winner of an Honorable Mention (category Art-Pictorial) at IQF Houston 2007.

The Time of Amber

The Time of Amber, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Another one I really like - it's different.

Quilt above made by Junko Sawada of Kanagawa-Ken; entered in the judged show (category: Art-Pictorial) at the 2007 Houston International Quilt Festival.

She

She, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I heard them say over the loudspeaker Sunday afternoon that "She" had won Viewer's Choice, but I had no idea which quilt that was. Apparently it's this one! Although come to think of it, I had noticed before that there was a lot of "ooh"ing going on in its vicinity. (Detail pictures here and here.)

Quilt above made by Tomoko Matsuura of Kanagawa, Japan; winner of Viewer's Choice in the judged show (category: Handmade) at IQF 2007.

Colorplay V

Colorplay V, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Anne Lullie of Illinois; entered in the judged show (category: Art-Abstract, Small) at IQF 2007.

Hope for Our World - Best of Show

Guess what, Hollis Chatelain won Best of Show again - with a little help from Archbishop Tutu!



Here's a piece with some info about it from the Houston paper. (There are several other articles about the festival, too, if you follow the links in the sidebar of that page.)


I'm a tired puppy. I did get a few pictures up, and hopefully I'll get some more up tonight and tomorrow.

More later.

On my way - almost

Somebody put up some quilt show pictures, already, and I looked at a couple and then stopped. It's like spoilers; I don't want to know ahead of time! I'm sure the list of winners is posted by now, too, but I've resisted looking for it. I'll find out soon enough, in just a couple of hours.

I nearly forgot that I told my aunt I'd have lunch with her. I'd better get going! And the Livejournal people are meeting at 6:30 tonight, not 6, so it's a good thing I checked on that.

OK, what am I forgetting?
camera - check
batteries and recharger - check (although I'm wondering whether I should go buy more!)
comfortable shoes - check
toothbrush and hairbrush - check
change of clothes - check
money and ticket - check

Really, what more do you need?

(I am tempted to stop at the new Best Buy on the freeway and buy an extra memory card for my camera, actually, as well as the batteries. Last year I ran out of room!)

Getting ready for IQF

Quilting-related task for today: find camera batteries, lots of them, and/or the recharger and lots of rechargeables. The quilt show requires many, many batteries. I can't remember how many I went through last year - I know it was at least 8. And rechargeables go even faster than regular ones. I prefer to use them because it feels less wasteful, but it'd be nice if they could make them last a bit longer.

I dragged way too much crap up to Houston last year but I have vowed to do better this year. And I'm going to try not to buy too much stuff, either. I have a new computer, have I mentioned that here? It wasn't a horribly expensive one but it was still an unplanned expense so we are trying to watch the spending extra closely. I have enough quilting stuff for any three people, anyway, god knows.

A month of posts for NaBloPoMo

I signed up for NaBloPoMo ("National Blog Posting Month") and promised to post every day this month, thinking that this would be easy since I will - hopefully - have a zillion pictures to post soon. The "hopefully" is because I have not been doing too well with technology lately, and at the rate I'm going I would be surprised if I managed to blow my camera up somehow, or something. So cross your fingers.

I usually post a bunch of pictures of Halloween and then Day of the Dead related quilts this time of year, but the fact is, I don't really have anything new to show, and I get tired of posting the same ones every year. So I'll let you decide for yourself about the pictures: if you haven't already seen all those pictures (or heck, just want to see them again), here they are!

(Hmm, a photo-free post is really rare for me here, but I intend to make up for it later!)