Thursday, September 25, 2014

New Mexico State Fair

Welcome to my unofficial, totally biased tour of the quilts at the New Mexico State Fair. Because I'm the spoiler alert type, I'll kill the suspense and begin with the mega ribbon catchers.

Louise Madori created this paisley pretty, which won Best of Show. I love the the orchid and grayscale color scheme, and how the floral and paisley motifs combine in a non-standard layout. The pieces were machine appliquéd An assortment of decorative stitches were used in the machine appliqué, and great attention was paid to the placement of prints. The pattern is Graceful Rhapsody by Denise Sheehan, and the fabric is from Quilting Treasures Jasmine collection.


Jean Bolton took the award for best hand quilted quilt.


Now, on to my quilts! (Shameless, I know.) I entered a small art quilt, and won first in the small quilt class of the professional quilt category. Shhh! Don't tell anyone that I was a winner by default since nobody else entered in this class. Check out my previous post about this project to get the inside scoop.

I also entered a shop sample for Quilts Ole that took second in the large quilt class of the professional category. Linda Nordt did such a nice job on the long-arm quilting that many had to look closely to determine that the center portion is a panel. The piecing surrounding was inspired by Lee's Diamond Tread Quilt, except I used stitch and flip triangles and rectangles instead of half square triangles.


The Albuquerque Modern Quilt Guild took the fair by storm.

Renee of Quilts of a Feather showed many quilts.  The Tardis made a couple appearances.




Renee's entry for the the Orange Peel Quilt-A-Long was hanging high.


Her profanity and incredible quilting captured the attention of the authorities in equal measure. If you want to see the naughty word unveiled, you'll have to go to her blog. She also details her impressions of the fair and the judge's comments in a special post.


ABQMQG member Tisha Cavenaugh won the machine quilting award for the pieced category.



Her original design and dense machine quilting are notable.


The New Mexico Quilters Association holds an annual challenge. This year, participants purchased a fat quarter of Patrick Lose's Mixmaster Satinesque Stripe. An assortment of colors was available. Winners were selected based on how successfully they used the fabric in a small wall-hanging. You can check out all the entries on the NMQA website.


Fellow ABQMQG member Debbie Rogulich took third place. She even dared use batiks alongside modern piecing and straight-line quilting. While considered scandalous by some, I love it!


To save you from quilt over-exposure (Okay, that doesn't actually exist!), I'm going to continue my little tour in another post, so come on back for more!

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13 comments:

  1. haha @ naughty word. One of these days I will take a break from working on your quilt and type up a post on the fair...though I did not take nearly as many photos of other people's quilts. Looking at quilts with the kids in tow is impossible.

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    1. My success can be attributed to sending the kids off to the petting zoo with Dad and the grandparents.

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  2. Thanks for the tour. I'm stuck at home with two sick dogs and had to miss the Northwestern Quilt Expo in Portland, my yearly treat, so my virtual trip to ABQ is a treat.

    In your next post, would you tell us the theme of the NMQA challenge?

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    1. I hope your dogs are feeling better, and am sorry your missed out on your yearly treat. What a disappointment! There was no particular theme, but participants were supposed to use a recognizable amount of the fat quarter they were given in a 24" x 24" quilt. The fabric this year was Patrick Lose's Mixmaster Satinesque Stripe. Different colors were provided, so the fabric doesn't look identical in each quilt.

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  3. Thanks for sharing! And congrats on your wins! Looking forward to your next post!

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    1. You are welcome, and thanks for the visit.

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  4. It's Debbie with the NMQA Challenge quilt. The Challenge was to use the fabric in our quilt, it's the blue stripe in the lower left. We could choose to use the blue, yellow, green or brown version of the fabric, which we purchased from our guild. We needed to use a "recognizable portion" of the fabric.
    I'm fairly new to modern quilting and not a big fan of solid fabrics. I can't see that would had "worked" if I had used all solids fabrics. I pieced this at a Jacquie Gering workshop last Feb. I didn't have the challenge fabric then, so I took out one of the fabrics and replaced it with the challenge fabric. I also used the fabric in a piece of the binding in the upper left side. I was delighted to have won 3rd place, as there was tough competition among the 11 entries.

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    1. I just noticed that a piece of the challenge fabric is in the lower right of the photo of my quilt.

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    2. Thanks for providing the succinct description of the challenge. Also, I must congratulate you on your excellent repurposing. I agree, the competition was stiff.

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  5. Congratulations! I would love to be in ABQ to visit the state fair sometime. :)

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    1. That would be fun! You could join me for some butter-dreched corn on the cob and a nice stroll around the home arts building.

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  6. Wow, that cancer wall hanging was amazing. Thanks for sharing some of the highlights of the fair.

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    1. You are welcome. I admire Renee's work, and count myself fortunate that she's local. Thanks to her winning a guild membership last year for her first place at the fair, I've had the honor of getting to know her at guild meetings.

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