AQS Quilt Show with Zenia!

My friend Zenia has arrived from Phoenix for a weekend of sewing and quilting. We have known each other one year, ever since we started our quilt blogs and started commenting on each other's logs . We went straight from the airport to the AQS quilt show in Des Moines.

Here she is with the first quilt that caught our eye (a blue ribbon winner):

Here's a close up of the dots making up the quilt's aboriginal feel. All appliqued (whew).



There were a lot of photo-transfer collages. My mom, Deborah Melton Anderson (her website), pioneered this technique (so why don't I use it more? I love these quilts).

The one below had a political message. It was about children of the canneries, and integrated quotes from historical sources. Why not a quilt about today's sweatshops!?? (I'm on it!)

This next one is not a photo transfer. It is simply an amazing quilt, called "Prairie Song" by someone from Wisconsin. Lots of plaids in the bird (my husband says this is a meadowlark).

 

A detail of "Prairie Song":

 

 

Photo-like representation using values was very "hot". Here's a closeup of some piggies from a barnyard montage. See the Kaffe Fassett fabrics? (Note also that these are happy pigs, not like the ones going into a hog concentration camp 1 mile from me.)

The author was selling patterns for all of the barnyard animals (chickens, cats, dogs, lambs, etc.) for $89.99. Can you imagine? You can find values to any picture simply by using the "Posterize" function on your phone. Here's Zenia, posterized:

I could make a quilt of Zenia. Or of my dog Teddy. Here's someone else's dog, a detail from a beautiful Japanese quilt.

Poppies were also popp-ular:

(Have some goldfish with your poppies).

My friend Doris Brunnette from the Des Moines Area Modern Quilters Guild won the first place for modern quilts. Way to go, Doris!

Many more quilts were seen and loved. A good time was had by all. And yes, I did buy something. More about that in the next post.