Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The International Quilt Festival comes back to Cincinnati

You might remember me going to the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati last year... the day before my wedding! My gramma and I snuck away and it was a great experience. I was so excited to see it was coming back again this year, and that I'd have more time to enjoy it.

Coolest part #1:


I was fancy. I got a media pass because of this blog. When the exhibitors saw the media badge, they were extra nice and let me take pictures of anything I wanted!

Coolest part #2:

Meeting Andi, from Udandi, in real life. She's my third friend I've met on Twitter and then met in real life, and she is awesome. Seriously - go check out her blog. And her second blog.

The festival seemed even larger than last year. Half the exhibition hall was set up with booths and the other half displayed the most beautiful quilts. I'll go through the vendor part today and the quilts tomorrow, because otherwise you'll be overloaded with pictures!


This lovely lady from Embellishment Village showed us how to use Angelia Fibers, which were amazing. Have any of you tried to sew with them? She made beautiful applique designs (the butterflies on her jacket are made from it too) but I loved it most for embellishing quilts, which I've never tried before. 

The Angelina fibers fuse to each other. Here she set the iridescent fibers over the "water," and it truly added movement and depth. Gorgeous. I think I'm going to order some to play with! There were a lot of other applications for it too. Andi and I were mesmerized.


She had also made this gorgeous quilt. The dresses are 3 dimensional -- the aprons lift off the quilt. Isn't it so cute??


How cute is this??? Look closely - the triangles at the top hold a yard stick! I love texture and dimension on quilts and the pocket for the tape measure and thimbles holds them! I didn't get the information from this quilter (media pass fail), but it was too adorable not to show you.


There were a lot of booths selling wool this year, but Woolylady was our favorite. We met the nicest woman (hi, Lisa!) who actually hand dyes all of the wool. Her partner Gail is who creates the beautiful projects. We must have talked to her for twenty minutes -- I just couldn't pull myself away from the gorgeous colors!






It was stunning. So soft to touch. The most beautiful vibrant colors. I'm still dreaming about it. One of my other favorite vendors was Handbehg Felts. Because of this:


The applique is made from felt. I love the somewhat random stitching on it. Here are some close ups of the squares...


Isn't the wonky stitching so cool??


The woman who made the blocks said you can't really screw it up. They have patterns every month on their website, and this quilt will be one of the free patterns up soon!

And just when I thought I couldn't fall in love any harder, check this out.


This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's a garland made out of felt balls, wooden thread spools and Christmas themed fabric scraps. It was absolutely darling and would look so sweet hanging from a mantle!

That's just the first half of our experience. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post about the gorgeous quilts we saw. They'll blow you away!!

3 comments:

  1. I love that garland so much! How perfect would that be in a craft room?

    These type of posts make me realize how much talent is in the world. Wow!

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  2. What a sweet memory you and your grandma were able to share the day before your wedding last year. I love that, this year, you got your own badge. I would be wearing that every where! Looks like you saw quite a bit to be inspired by.

    amy @ whilewearingheels.blogspot.com

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  3. I had no idea that they met in Cincinnati... I could have gone... sigh!
    I'll keep up on it for next year and hope they come back to Cincy next year.. The photo's are awesome... it looks like it was just heaven!! So cool!
    Can't wait to see tomorrows photo's...


    Carri
    simplydonewright.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

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