Friday, February 15, 2008

The beautiful astonishing world of nature quilts!

I freely admit that I'm a Quilt addict! For those who only know quilts as warm wonderful cozy blankets......you need to go to a good quilt show and see the beautiful artistry that the modern quilter creates! Art quilts abound! Nature themes are fantastically reproduced in paint, piecing, applique, thread work and other mediums. I am fortuate enough to be able to attend 2 major quilt shows every year.....Paducah (home of the Museum of the American Quilter) and Nashville's show at the Opryland Hotel. Both fantastic shows full of 100's of beautiful quilts. Only in my dreams will I ever make a quilt with this sort of beauty! I have 1000's of photos from the shows and since they allow you to take pictures, I assume I am not breaking any copyright laws by showing them here. I wish I could list the quilter, but don't have books for all the shows. Here are a few bird and flower and other nature themes that I loved....some are close ups of parts, others the whole quilt.


Sometimes the back of a quilt is just as fantastic as the front...........see below!

I can not figure out how to make Blogger allow my photos to be double-clicked and made larger. So if I have whetted your appetite, here is a link to Shutterfly album of these and other quilt show pictures. Enjoy!

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b35c06f5a433&sid=0JZNnDRq3YsPS

7 comments:

Melissa said...

Those are certainly some amazing quilts. Why are some people so talented? I love the swans and the little bluebird. Another birdbrained person, Melissa

Mary said...

Melissa, I would like to have even an ounce of that talent. I went heavily with bird quilts I've seen, but as you know the flower quilts are out there in droves also. Can't wait til Paducah! Join me there this year!!

me ann my camera said...

Such very beautiful quilts! Especially the Pileated Woodpecker one.

Mary said...

I love the woodpecker, too. That one was at Paducah last year. They are even more amazing in real life.....so realiistic and the stitching often adds so much to them. These women and men are very talented artists! Some are hard to photograph. They make great desktop wallpaper :-)

Sandpiper (Lin) said...

These are stunning! I love the Wren and Swans. But just look at the rest of all those birds, too. Are those Ivorybills or Pileated Woodpeckers? It's difficult to choose a favorite from these. They are all so good. Thanks for this interesting blog, Mary. You always come up with such interesting things.

brucesc said...

I'm so glad you showed all these wonderful nature quilts, especially the birds. I'm sending your link to my sister who is a quilter and a birder too. The bluebird and the ivory-bills are my favorites, but of course, I have to love the Carolina wren too--our state bird. Thanks for the tour--hope you'll do another after the next show.

Mary said...

I'm glad everyone likes the quilts! Every major city has quilt shows and every local guild has talented quilters....check your city and visit a quilt show! There are also lots of images on the internet that you can look at. When I go to a show I usually take as many as 400 pictures, so this was just a very small sampling. Shutterfly only lets me put 250 in an album...drat!