Embroidered Collage

The Eighth Deadly Sin exhibit at Quiltfest was very striking.  The topics covered ranged from personal issues to very political ones, chocolate to apathy to hypocrisy and beyond.  You can also view the online exhibit on the QuiltArt page.  My favorite was Mary Richling's "Cash is King - Clip the Card" because of how she manipulated a classic quilt pattern to a great visual effect from both a distance and close up.  Close up you can see the comments she's written in the red areas about obtaining, declining, using, and misusing credit.

Another highlight was seeing Laura Murray do a demonstration on how to use Shiva Paintstiks.  I was able to see the effects of rubbing, stenciling, and direct application in person.  The stenciling aspect was new to me and an interesting idea.  It had also never really registered that you can use the paintstiks on ANY fabric.  I bought a gold one from her and won an auction for a few mini-sized ones at a discounted price on ebay, so I should get to play soon.

Just looking at all the quilts is worth the price of admission for me.  I don't linger over the traditional ones, just the art quilts, but it's fun to see them, especially this year's grouping of log cabin variations.  The international section really piques my interest because the approaches to quilting can very so much, even beyond the normal variance for art quilts.  One thing I'd noticed last year was reinforced this year - I love it when the quilting patterns complement and contrast with the piecing pattern, adding a full extra layer of interest to the piece, taking advantage of the possibilities of the media chosen.

My favorites this year included two Australians and a Canadian.  Rosalee Morris created "Complexities and Complications" which incorporated traditional methods but had irregular edges, dangly bits, incorporated stones, and more rich warm colors.  Gillian Hand made a background of sheer fabric encasing fibers and then applied irregular appliqued and embellished fragments along a color-changing grid to form "Rainbow Lorikeet."  Val Smith's "If Jackson Pollock were a Quilter" was a fantastic explosion of color that was based on English paper piecing shapes, but the section would go in different directions and different elements were added on.

I did wander into the scrapbooking section, new this year, as well.  And discovered the Ichiyo Art Center and their marvelous wonderful papers.  I now completely understand the addiction Zhenia was forming!  I bought a few to play with, of course.  And I finally learned a little more about inkpads, which was helpful.