Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Chautauqua Quilts

Last weekend I went to the Quilting Around Chautauqua quilt show at the Chautauqua Institution in NY. There's this neighborhood of beautiful old homes, many of them are summer homes on the lake. They also do cultural events, I've been there twice before for performances. It was nice to get out of the house, and I definitely got my exercise- 800 quilts were spread out in buildings all over the general area. It might have been nice to have had someone with me, but I had fun and got to explore and see what I wanted. Both the houses and the quilts were inspirational. I love old houses and quilts so it was a great match.




Wouldn't you love to live here?

This little church was unique and really cute:


A tiny public garden that was cute, had some pagodas around:

A beautiful, huge hotel:

I think I found my house:


You know you're in a nice neighborhood when this is the "homely" house in the neighborhood!

And on to the quilts:



A beautiful 1800's fan quilt:


Cute to use log cabin squares as pumpkins:


I'm not always a fan of batiks, but they work well in this:


A cute Christmas log cabin, it'd be cute as a big quilt:

I love the log cabin/stars combo, but I'd do different colors:

What a cute snowman!


I don't always like "mod" quilts but I like this one (Basic Grey does scrapbook paper and fabric):

If you don't want to do a whole big quilt you can do a framed one, it could be cute:


I LOVE LOVE LOVE 30's fabric...here's a cute chicken wallhanging:


and 30's butterflies! The whole thing was like 18"sq.

1930's baskets were sweet in a wallhanging:
The mini quilts were amazing...this whole quilt is 11 and 3/4 inches square...each bear paw was tiny and amazingly exact! Whoever did this was really talented:

It was a fun afternoon, I was definitely the youngest person there! It was funny because the "soundtrack" for the day was listening to women ohh and awww over everything.

There were a lot more neat quilts but those were my faves. I'm trying to get into quilting, been reading books, hoarding fabric and collecting patterns for a few months now. I really have a fun time putting fabrics and patterns together...now I just have to actually do it! I really wish I had more space to do stuff like this!

No comments: