Pictures from the Long Beach Show

Some of the absolutely best quilt shows in the country are put on by Quilts, Inc., out of Houston TX. For the past two years, they have had a show in Long Beach CA; this year the show was held in July with a preview session on Thursday evening, July 23, and the regular show hours on Friday through Sunday.

I worked in the booth of Unique Sewing Furniture for two of the show days. I have known Patrick Grant, the owner of Unique and the designer of all of the various sewing machine cabinets and cutting tables that they sell, for several years and have used his cabinets in my sewing room for at least 9 or 10 years. They are reasonably priced, made of wood (not plastic and/or fiberboard), look beautiful and hold up very well, even with the really heavy use that my machine cabinets have been put through. Those of you who have seen my "Fluff & Stuff: Machine Quilting with Paula Reid" DVD and have e-mailed and written letters asking who makes my furniture - Pat's the guy. His website is http://www.uniquesewingfurniture.com/.

Whenever I work at a quilt show, I really try to get up early enough on one of the mornings to go look at the quilts at least an hour before the show opens. That way, I can browse almost to my heart's content and take pictures without having too many people between the lens and the quilts! At this show, I noticed that a number of the exhibits prohibited photography, so I wasn't able to get as many photos as I wanted, darn it!

I learned a really great tip by watching one of the professional photographers at the show. Bonnie McCaffery (who is also an awesome quilter, designer, book author, etc.; check her out at http://www.bonniemccaffery.com/) had a tripod set up and was moving systematically through the show taking her pictures. I am just a beginning photographer and was thinking about how to keep track of the quilts and the makers so that I would be able to match them up later. I saw Bonnie take a picture of a quilt and then take a picture of the display sheet that described the quilt and had the name of the maker on it. Bingo - thanks, Bonnie!

So here are some of the pictures I took:

This is called "Village Ladies". It was made by Sylvia Davis of Los Angeles CA and machine quilted by Nadine Hegamin. Loved the striping on the top and bottom, the star in the center; in other words, the whole quilt! Here is a closeup of one of the "ladies:

I'm very attracted to these ethnic types of quilts as well as African fabrics, jewelry and the wonderful colors used in them. The mottled fabric used in the block backgrounds was very intriguing, too.

"No Turn on Red" was hand and machine pieced and quilted, as well as hand beaded, by Jo P. Griffith of Del Mar CA. Her artist's comment: "Sometimes a change in direction is needed even if it is not wanted." Since some of the fabrics had lettering printed on them, you could see that they were used backwards, upside down, even wrong side out!

"Spring in Japan" is machine pieced and quilted, machine and hand appliqued by Akiko Kawata of Osaka, Japan. I was just drawn into this quilt by the beautiful colors and applique. Just had to have a closeup:

And, finally for today, here's a closeup of the the beautiful Leslie Gabrielese quilt that I closed my last blog entry with: