Quilt Show in Siren

[lydamorehouse]

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Image: Traditional strip quilt (machine sewn) on hanging on display in a small town quilt show.

We are up in Siren, Wisconsin this weekend visiting our friends' cabin. It's a little cold for a dip in the lake, but we had been seeing signs for a Quilt Show this weekend in the nearby town of Weber. The four of us piled into the car, grabbed our masks, and headed to the Weber High School gym to check out the fabric art.

I had a BLAST.

I am often really fond of these kinds of small town events. We actually had to leave immediately after we arrived because the ladies taking the $5 admission didn't have a way to take credit cards. We should have thought of that, honestly, but it was no problem to hop into the town and stop by the local bank's ATM.


Image a small quilt of a circle of stylized houses.

Each quilt came with an artist's statement. Some quilters noted things like, "There is one piece where I used the 'wrong' side of the pattern. Can you find it?" to telling meaningful stories about who the quilt was made for.


Image: example of artist statements. This one ends with a very Midwestern commentary, "...I think this turned okay. Even if it is a bit loud."

There were lots and lots of lovely traditional quilts, but I took a few pictures of the more unique one. One of my favorites (which of course means I got a somewhat blurry picture of) was a "portrait of Frankenstein's Monster."


The quilt

My favorite part of this quilt is the detail. It doesn't look like much from a distance, but if you get close you can see that the quilter stitched in words relating to the novel:



Image: The words written into the quilting of the Frankenstein's monster included "monstrosity" and "deformed."

Here's one of a parade of geisha:

Image: The kimono are all overly lovely.

And, one of my favorites was one that had been quilted for a nerdy nephew because it featured a number of his favorite t-shirts and flourished with a bunch of dragons because he was a big D&D player. In the center, the quilter had even included the D&D logo:


Image: D&D quilt

Anyway, we spent a lot of time wandering the gym. We happened to come on the day when visitors could vote for favorites, so we walked around with a pencil and a slip on which we could vote for small, medium, large favorites. There was an odd size and a "challenging" category, too. That kind of made the whole thing extra fun, because you looked at each one wondering if you could bestow a winning ribbon on one of these. 

It was tremendous. Highly recommend doing something wonderfully mundane like this every once and a while.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Those quilts are AMAZING! Thanks for the photos. I enjoyed them vicariously.

[lydamorehouse]

I took, like, a hundred more pictures, but I didn't want to clutter up the whole blog with them. There were some really amazing ones.

[kore]

I LOVE the Frankenstein one.

[lydamorehouse]

I voted for it to win in the medium category. A lot of people were admiring it, so I'm hopeful it will win. Shawn and I are thinking on going back tomorrow to check out the winners and do a little bit more shopping--they had a bunch quilting supply/crafting booths along the far wall.

[sabotabby]

The D&D one! omg.

One of my friends entered one of those quilting contests with the only quilt they'd ever made. It was made from all of their old band t-shirts that were falling apart. They won second, after a phenomenally talented granny, and I was so proud of them.

[lydamorehouse]

Oh my god, that's an amazing story. I'm proud of them too! I will say that seeing these on display made me consider entering some of my ridiculous quilts into the State Fair's contest when it comes around.

[skygiants]

These quilts are really gorgeous, thanks for the photos!

[lydamorehouse]

You're very welcome, it was fun to stop by!

[lcohen]

these are great! i don't know if you will like these or not--these quilts are made by the mother of a former partner of mine, with whom i am still friends (ambiguous antecedent but i am still friends with both the mother and the partner :) ):

https://www.rosaliedace.net/gallery

i think she is amazing, and i love hearing her talk about her process, but they are very much more art than always being representational. she also makes traditional quilts--she made one as a wedding present when my former partner married his now husband.