Farmpark Quilt Show!!! Part 1

Today I wanted to show you some of my favorite quilts from this year's show. I didn't get to the show as early as I normally do each year, but dang it was cold! I was a hibernating fool this winter. My best friend and I (and her kiddos) took advantage of a nice warm sunny day to check out the show and the rest of the park.

 When you walk into the Farmpark entrance during the show, this is what you'll see... The Best of Show is hanging in the entrance for all to see!

 This quilt is spectacular to say the least! Sorry for the sun spots, but I wasn't going to complain about the sunshine! You can't really see the quilting in this picture, but you can see the detailing in the picture below.

 This is the back of the quilt. It's really more of an off-white color, but I tried to enhance the contrast to show the quilting better. Those little pebbles and swirls are about the size of a pea... And don't even get me started on the outlined applique shapes and the stars!!! Gorgeous!!!

 Now, you've seen a bunch of Quiltworx (Judy Niemeyer) quilts on my blog in the past. I really liked this one for the use of solid fabrics and the simple yet effective quilting. It gives a totally different vibe this way.

 I can't even begin to tell you how many people told me about this quilt before I got to the show. They'd all start the story with - there's this quilt... when you turn down the one hallway it's at the end... By the third or fourth tale, I knew which quilt they were talking about and I hadn't even seen it yet! (I know someone somewhere is shaking a grammatical finger at my last sentence and I'm sorry, but I'm typing how I'd talk and sometimes it's not pretty)

Back to the quilt. This thing had to take FOREVER!!! There's applique and sparkles and rhinestones and the quilting!!! Here take a look:

 Can we say detail? There's even little other details quilted in... You could stare at this quilt for hours and still not see it all! It was gorgeous and I can't even imagine taking on such a task!

 I loved this quilt that blended a complex block with a traditional design and then threw in a wave applique on top of it all! For me, I don't know how to tackle adding the applique and blending it in with the pieces like that... This was very neat to see!

 And the hand quilting! I actually started hand quilting before I switched to long arming... I actually hate to say switch, I still like to hand quilt, but for deadline reasons I usually opt for the machine. Well, this quilt was made by the sweet lady that taught me to hand quilt. Her quilting is so dense in certain blocks, it adds texture rather than another element. She echoed around these flowers about every 1/8th inch!

 Here's another picture of the quilt. There were alternate blocks with a little less quilting, but her work is superb and she works hard to achieve these results! I love hand quilting, but I don't see myself quilting this dense!

 I also loved seeing the quilts with teeny tiny pieces. These aren't the tiniest I saw, but this was a large quilt with strips that finished at probably 3/4" or less... That's a lot of little seams!

We saw some quilts, then we took a break to see the animals and let the kids milk a cow! Literally right down the hallway from one of the rooms for the quilt show is the Dairy Parlor! And just on the other side of the Parlor is a room they use for quilting classes during the show. I took many more pictures and I'll show them over the next few days.

I had a blast checking out the quilt show and the park and it was even more fun to have these guys tagging along! I got to see what Katti thought of the quilts form her perspective. She and I used to quilt a long time ago and then life happened, but she's looking to get back into it. Plus it was fun to see what the kids thought of the quilts too!

Did you see a favorite quilt? This show had 186 quilts entered this year. There was something for everyone and then some! I'll show you more pictures tomorrow!