Road to California 2013–part I

Okay, here’s a truth.  When you are sewing your brains out, you aren’t  blogging much.  And since I’ve been on a tear with a couple of quilts, I haven’t yet given the recap of Road to California 2013 version.  I’ve been remiss.  Let’s begin.

As we’ve noticed this week at QuiltCon, the connections we make with other quilters are valuable and as invigorating as creating new quilts, and so I want to start the post by acknowledging my debt to some of my quilty friends–thank you all.  Here we are at the first day’s lunch: Leisa, me, Laurel and Lisa.

Dinner that night was at our local El Torrito, where Jean, Laurel, JoDy, (me) and Leisa ate chips, chewed over the quilt show, inhaled the guacamole.  We sort of do this every year, so if you come, join us.

Last group shot: Debbie from Miss Luella, Cindy from Live A Colorful life and the rest of us.  I am happy to have such great friends.  Now here’s some other people we saw at the quilt show.

Queen of the Nereids: Deborah Levy was the quilter and maker.  This was a lot of fun to look at, ooh over and find the interesting details (like how did she keep those shells on?)

  She’s from New Orleans–the quilter, not the mermaid–so she does know water.  I love the texture in that hair, and she used some of my favorite thread: Superior (I’m a fan!).

Laurie Tigner made and quilted this fascinating homage to ancient religious icons, Silver Madonna -1 .  First she painted silver spandex, then quilted it.  She said the fabric was stretchy in four direction, “but worked beautifully.”

The quilting made me swoon.

Samson and Delilah, by Jerry Granata from California (near me!).  This was such an interesting image, prompted by his love of Art Deco and the art by Erte.

He quilted it all on a regular sewing machine.

Sirena has a secret.

This quilt, by DeLoa Jones (who was on the faculty of Road) lit up this quilt with LED lights and sparkley things that we buy at Disneyland.

   Very ingenious.

I couldn’t get a great shot of this, but it was wonderfully made by five different quilters of the Collective Visions quilt group: Kathy Adams, Joan Baeth, Susan Massini, Louise Page, with Kathy Adams as the quilter.

Grandma’s Big Fish was based on a photograph taken in 1959.  Don’t we all want to be like this woman?

Celise, by Carol Swinden, melted my heart, but then again, it was a picture of Swinden’s granddaughter that prompted it.

The quilting was really amazing, drawing in the contours.  I apologize for the harsh lighting, but the colors were more delicate in person.

Hope you can see this background quilting.

Surrender was a quiet quilt, tucked in among some showier ones, but took my breath away for the depiction of a mother saying good-bye to her newly deceased newborn. Maria Elkins of Ohio, paid homage to all those moms who have had to say farewell at birth.  She dedicated it to her grandchild, “who was given into the loving hands of her daughter and son-in-law.” I studied it for a long time.

One of their special exhibits was “Pink,” a lovely collection of quilts with pink as their predominant color.

Makes you want to go out and get some pink, right?