Greetings! This year’s Vermont Quilt Festival – celebrating 40 years! – was wonderful as usual. Lots of fabulous quilts to look at and special exhibits to enjoy. My quilt was awarded one of 4 “Judge’s Choice” awards – given by well known antique quilt collector, appraiser, quilt historian and lecturer, Gerald Roy. What an honor!! Each judge gets to pick one quilt that is their favorite and which they would take home with them if they could. I was fortunate to be able to meet him and thank him.
In the overall judging, I received a red ribbon (second place); I’ll be very interested to get my scores and see where my deductions were when the quilt comes home later this week. I’ll try to remember to share my thoughts on this in the next post. For now I want to share my favorite quilts from the show with you.
My favorite quilt in the show and the one I would have given my “Judge’s Choice” ribbon to if I had been a judge is Barbara Korengold’s “Ben’s Midnight Garden.” WOW! I had seen pictures of this quilt on line and been blown away by it, but to see it in person was heaven. This is all hand appliqued and hand quilted and, INMO, one of the most beautiful quilts I’ve seen. I wish I had made it!! Click on any pictures for enlargements:
This next quilt by Chris Wickert was Best of Show and is beautiful!!! The colors are subtle – what would now be referred to as “low volume” – but lovely and the quilt is entirely hand made. The workmanship is exquisite. I was very fortunate to meet Chris for the first time at the show and we had lunch together. I’ve long admired her work and it was great to meet her and share quilting stories!
Chris has had 2 previous Best of Show quilts at Vermont (that I’m aware of) so this makes 3, I believe!! She used some silk in this one, but it’s mostly made of cottons, unlike some of her previous recent quilts which have been all silk. Love her edging on this one and there are bead embellishments too.
The work on this next quilt was amazing and the result is a gorgeous quilt!!! I had wanted to meet Megan Farkas and we were finally able to briefly meet when we were both attending Ruth McDowell’s walk through and discussion of her exhibit (which was fabulous; more on that in another post). I’m hoping to have a chance to talk with Megan more at some point in the future. This is another hand made quilt – hand appliqued and hand quilted. Just amazing (please click to enlarge and see the wonderful details):
While the above 3 quilts are hand done, the next 2 favorites were machine quilted. I love Ann Feitelson’s work and look forward to seeing something new from her at each Vermont show and she didn’t disappoint this year. I love, love, love her use of color and adore this quilt:
Finally, this next quilt by Marsha Molloy won the award for the best “traditional” quilt in the show. I loved it and would like to some day make something similar. I love the dotted background fabric she used and love how the fussy cut hexagons came out:
I’m going to end this post here. I have much more to share from Vermont over next few posts. Also, I am making good progress on my “resurrected UFO” and will update you next time. Will talk next time, too, about the process of making berries for applique. Stay tuned!
Be kind, be grateful, and cherish each day, Gladi
gladiquilts 
Congratulations, how wonderful to have your quilt chosen by one of the judges as their favourite. Thank you for showing the quilts from VQF, I agree with your choice, so much work, absolutely beautiful. Looking forward to the next blog and seeing how you do your berries.
Thank you, Susan. Good to hear from you and glad you are enjoying my blog. Gladi
Thank you for sharing. I had plans to attend the show for the first time but had to cancel my plans earlier this week. Hopefully next year.
Truly enjoy your blog. Thank you.
Shary Fellows
Rockland, Maine
Hi Shary. I’m so glad you enjoy my blog; thanks! So sorry you couldn’t make it to the Vermont show; they always do a great job. It’s definitely worth trying to go next year. Gladi
Thank you so much for the show highlights. Now I am even more sad that I had to miss it. Congratulations on your Judges Choice. I posted it on my Blog. I was so excited. I am not surprised that Gerald Roy chose it, I certainly would have! One of the reasons I love VT so much is that they do tend to have more hand quilted quilts and this year did not disappoint. We will meet in person soon I hope! Are you planning on attending the Maine show in July? I will be there all 3 days in the antique room.
Hi Wendy. Thank you for posting the picture of my quilt on your blog!! I very much enjoyed seeing your leaves quilt – absolutely love those autumn colors and our quilts were hanging very close to each other so that was fun. So sorry you couldn’t make it to the show as it was a good one. I am planning to attend the Maine show but not sure yet whether it will be Saturday or Sunday as I will be in the car for several hours on Friday returning from the Syracuse show and will need to decide if I need Saturday to recuperate. I will look for you. Gladi
Gladi: It was wonderful to see your quilt in person and congrats on the ribbons. I looked over my judges comments with another friend when we went out to dinner after picking up our quilts. It’s always interesting to see which comments we agree with, and which we don’t! We ended up with the same score, which made it more fun to see where the individual high/low marks were.
Thank you! I am having my quilt shipped home so, in addition to anxiously awaiting its arrival this week, am waiting to get a look at the judge’s remarks. It will be interesting to see if I agree with them! I have a continuing issue with how they score quilt design since many quilters use the patterns of others with no changes or variations and therefore can’t really be judged in that category except for use of color and fabric choices! Gladi
Gladi: Funny you would mention that! I was at the Judges Panel on Friday and that subject came up several times. I have long felt that quilts from purchased patterns should be in a different category from people who draft/design their own. Especially for larger shows. When machine quilting got popular it didn’t take long to separate it from hand quilting, and when longarms came along, they separate that from domestic machine quilting.
I feel strongly about giving credit for original design and will likely talk about it some more in a post soon! Gladi
Congratulations on your ribbon. So well deserved. Love your blog – so inspiring.
Thank you Gail. Glad to hear you are enjoying the blog. Hearing from folks like you who enjoy reading what I write inspires me to keep going with it! Gladi
Congratulations! What a huge Honor and a really special quilt. I also did BB SIATW and made little stars. I love your PA Dutch coloration. Great overview of other quilts too. Have you met Christine? She is the nicest person!!
Thank you! I met Chris at the show last weekend for the first time and we had a nice lunch together!
Congratulations! Saw your quilt on Barbara’s blog and had to come over to see more. It is absolutely gorgeous. Very well deserved ribbon. Love the other quilts too. Awesome!! ;^)
Thank you, Chantal, for your very kind words about my quilt and I’m glad to hear you enjoyed seeing the pictures. Gladi
The Civil War Quilts blog post sent me over today and I am loving your blog!
It has such a beautiful aesthetic and I can’t wait to read as many of your posts as I have time to read today!!
Thank you for commenting and I’m so glad to hear you enjoy my blog. I’ve been reading your blog regularly for some time and enjoy it very much! Gladi
Thanks so much. All gorgeous but yours is out of this world!
Thank you so much! Gladi