Manteca Quilt Show

I keep referring to not having enough time to sew recently. I could go into a whole dissertation about what is enough, but the short answer is: I haven’t found what enough is.

I have been doing quilt stuff, just not sewing. I talked about the BAMQG meeting, the Primal Green viewing and the SFQG show. My last other quilt event from earlier this month was the Manteca Quilt Show. Manteca is a small town about 1.5 or 2 hours from where I live. My mom lives out there and I want to encourage her to join up with other quiltmakers in her area. It is a small show, but they had great quilts and a nice vendor mall. You can see all the quilts in my Flickr set.

Basket Embroidery Piece
Basket Embroidery Piece

All over the hall were different little displays of embroidery. We would never see this in a larger quilt show. It made the show seem very homey. I especially liked this pattern. I am a sucker for baskets.

There were probably about 100 quilts. Many of them were Sampler quilts. I have a soft spot in my heart for Sampler quilts. I think that Sampler quilts are a great way to learn to make quilts in a class setting. I know that method is not in favor at this time. This guild makes Sampler quilts. There were a number of star samplers and Christmas Samplers. I think they had different block exchanges, but I don’t know for sure.

Provence Sampler
Provence Sampler

Above is one of the best sampler quilts I have ever seen. I love the use of the Provence fabrics. This style really shows off the fabrics well. The maker has really shown the power of blocks by her use of fabric.

Provence Sampler Star
Provence Sampler Star

The block above is similar to the block I used in the Frosted Star quilt. I really like the corners, too.

Provence Star
Provence Star

I also like this star, which looks complex because of the angles and also because of the use of fabric, but upon further examination is really doable.

Bright Secondary Pattern
Bright Secondary Pattern

One of my favorite quilts was the quilt above because of the great secondary pattern created by the combination of two blocks. I also like the colors. using yellow as the neutral is awesome!

Bright Secondary Pattern - detail
Bright Secondary Pattern - detail

You can see that one block is a 16 patch and the one next to it is an hour glass pattern. It is a great use of these two blocks together. Also, the joyful use of color is wonderful.

Star Border
Star Border

I was really impressed with the piecing of this group. There were some simple quilts and beginner quilts, but a lot of the piecing in a large majority of the quilts had some element of creativity or complexity. The picture above shows a quilt that had one large piece of fabric in the middle and then this lovely star border. If you look closely, the star border can be dissected to show that it is easily recreatable.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.