Lowell Quilt Festival - The Main Exhibit

I've focused on all of the work that the BMQG put into the Lowell Quilt Festival and its special exhibit this year, but I'd also like to show off some of the great quilts at the main exhibit. I will say, I find the lighting to be very poor at this show.  It's held in an auditorium that's used for plays and shows, so it's not meant to have bright lighting.  I don't think the black draping helped either.  It was really hard to capture the true colors of the quilts. 

This festival is what got me started on quilting 10 years ago.  I went to a show, fell in love with the quilts, bought my first fat quarter bundle and pattern, and got to work.  Now, there are very few vendors, they offer no classes, and the venue doesn't exactly show the quilts in their best possible light.  With the World Quilt Show in Manchester always occurring the following weekend, I worry that this festival could be in trouble.  I used to go to this show for several days, vising and buying products from tons of vendors, taking classes, and going to the many exhibits. This year, I bought things from just two vendors, some thread from one and some Tula Pink Birds and the Bees fat quarters from another.

Anyway, sit back, and enjoy the show!

BMQG Mini Quilt Challenge

For the BMQG special exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival, I helped arrange a mini quilt challenge for the show.  The guidelines were pretty simple, make a mini quilt, no more than 24" on any side in at least three colors of QuiltCon. 

I showed you my Dazzling Diamonds quilt over the past few weeks, but look at some of the other awesome quilts. Seriously?  The talent is amazing.

Here are some closeups of the awesome quilts!

This is Rebecca's quilt.  Her quilting on this is awesome.  I love the simplisity and her use of prints.  She used some of my favorites! 

This is Steph's mini quilt for the challenge.  I love how dramatic this quilt looks.  The scissor print binding is awesome too!

This is Karen's entry into the challenge.  I love spinning flying geese and this quilt is just awesome.  The quilting is simple to compliment the busy piecing.  Just awesome!

The awesome Alice made this mini quilt out of tiny tiny half square triangles.  We both bought the same bundle of solids for the challenge but our quilts look so different.  I really love how this came out, and the circular quilting adds some great movement to the quilt.

This mini quilt was made by Janis.  She sued some great print fabrics that go with the color scheme to make this awesomely funky mini.  I love the improvisational aspect of the quilt yet there's a decent amount of structure at the same time. 

This fun mini is Nancy's entry.  I love the way that she used just three colors - it makes such a great statement.  At first glance I think it looks like a fun forest with a bunch of colorful trees.  She also used some great prints in her quilt.

Finally, you have my entry.  It's funny seeing this one with all of the others.  My quilt looks so much darker than everyone's.  It just goes to show you how different people can interpret a challenge when given a set of colors to work with. I was the only one to not include white in my quilt.  I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but it certainly stands out.

To help engage visitors to the show, we're asking everyone to vote on their favorite quilt of the seven.  Which one is your favorite?  It's a hard choice, I know.  They're all so different and unique in their own awesome way.

MQX 2012

This weekend I didn't get much sewing done.  Part of this is because I spent all of Saturday at MQX admiring so many fantastic quilts.  I got to spend about an hour in my quilting room yesterday working on my Modern She Made Swap project, which I'll share soon. 

I always enjoy going to MQX.   While it's geared more towards the machine quilter, I find it fun to admire the quilts and dream about one day owning a long arm.  I've already told my husband that our next house will have room for one. 

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the quilt goodness from MQX below.

This quilt won best of show!

Here are some more quilts...

This was a cute mini quilt.

This hummingbird mini is adorable.

I'm not a dog person, but this quilt is cute.

This mini was amazing. 

I loved this quilt.  I probably would have picked a different background personally, but it really worked with this quilt.

There were two quilts with this pattern at the show.

Both were lovely.

My cat, Bentley, totally does this every time I turn on the faucet in the bathroom. 

This was the most modern quilt in the show. It was made using all solids. 

Phew, that's a lot of quilts.  And to think that I only posted SOME of them.