MQS Kansas

Well, I'm arrived in Kansas safe and sound. It it a beautiful city, all green and growing. Its a far cry from the early spring I left in Calgary. When we arrived the  humidity was stifling and way too hot. Without the humidity, it would be quite lovely. Let me tell you this, I know why the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz melted, the humidity did her in!

My first day was spent setting up the booth. I have worked shows before but kits and patterns are a whole lot less work than  individual spools of threads. Yikes. We were kept busy running about, talking thread and quilting with customers. I hardly had time to view the quilts. But let me tell you this ladies, they were fabulous. I've never seen such a variety of technique assembled in one place.



Aunt Polly's Porch
Quilted by Marilyn Badger.
Painted by Claudia Clark Myers.
3rd Place: Art/Pictorial.



Machine embroidery, hand embroidery, piecing, whole cloth quilts, wool quilts, machine and hand applique and what I can only call mock-applique. Quilters are taking whole pieces of cloth and quilting them with intricate designs and coloring them in too look like applique. They use pens, ink, markers, water colors, pencil crayons and special pencil crayon designed to blend with water. Irena Blume does fabulous work in this area and gave me a demonstration of how it works. Check her out at http://www.irenabluhmscreations.com/.

There was also a ton of fabulous quilting. Much of it was done by computerised machine which did not, in my opinion, even come close to the beauty and diversity that was created by hand guided machines. The majority of quilts that took prizes were quilted by hand guided machines using custom quilting.


I have never been so inspired and depressed all at once. I couldn't wait to get home and practise my custom freehand quilting and at the same time worried that my skill would  never match that of these masters. I've decided that while I will likely never match them that I am going to practise and give it my best shot.



Magical Mermaid's Castle by Claudia Pfeil. Winner: Best of Show. Fabulous detail
quilting with hundreds, maybe thousands of crystals for accent. WOW!

  


Detail of Magical Mermaid's Castle

  
 








Detail of Magical Mermaid's Castle



Red Letter Daze by Janet Stone.
This quilt also took a prize by the detail
photo did not turn out. Apologies to Janet.



Detail of Red Letter Daze