Wisconsin Quilt Expo

Turns out my Internet Explorer program decided not to like Blogger any more so I had to reinstall the program. Sometimes computers just don't understand what we want and misbehave like a little kid.

So - yesterday I decided to have an adventure on my first day of vacation since I won't be going anywhere this week and I got up early and headed east toward Wisconsin. I got to the border, also known as the St Croix River and drove 4.5 hours to Madison.

 

At the Alliant Center was the Wisconsin Quilt Expo sponsors by among others - Nancy Zieman.

There was lots of vendors, quilts, classes, and lectures.



 



One thing I noticed about the quilts is there is much more quilting (thanks to the new longarm machines) and many people are painting on their quilts. Watching the change over the past 15 years has been interesting.

 

Of course if you want to get my friend Sarah happy there must be a cat on the quilt. This one is painted and quilted - a lot.

 

 

Another painted one with lots of quilting.

 

 

 

Much of the next is actually pieced with a bit of painting.

 

 

 

The other thing I noticed frequently was the blending of applique and piecing. I've always like the combination cause it seems to give the quilts more life.

 

 

 

The was also a lot of crazy color/print combinations. A few of them were just too much but mostly this riot of print gave the quilt a vibrant look.

 

 

 

I liked the way they had the quilts displayed. Many shows I've been to including Minnesota's have the quilts set up in little alcoves or U-shapes with 3 quilts in each U. This looks nice but people tend to block the view of the quilts more. With the U shape set up I always find it hard to get a clean view of a quilt when taking pictures. With the rows of quilts like this the people looking at other quilts were less frequently in the way of photo taking.

 

So - here's a few more quilts to enjoy. I took over 100 pictures so this is just a few..

 

Another thing I noticed was several quilts were somple blocks with a lot of blank space which was then filled with tons of quilting. The huge number of longarm quilters out there is becoming very obvious.

 

One of the talks was the people from the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts. They've purchased an 1840 farmstead and converted the barn to a display museum with space for special shows and classes.

 

So after a full day of quilts and vendors ( and a few purchases) I headed for home as the sunset in the west.

 

 

Today being inspired by the show I got the Christmas hanging out and worked on it. Bert was very pleased to hold down the material while I did a bit of fussy cutting. Fortunately, no tails were trimmed in the cutting of my pieces.

 

Here's the 9 patches of the wall hanging. I would have preferred a deeper green and a whiter white but - in person the gold glows and this will make a nice bit of color on the wall for Christmas.