New England Quilt Festival

I'm at MQX or I guess it's the New England Quilt Festival, now. MQX has such a nice ring to it, so it's hard for me to make the switch to the new name.

I took classes on using Art and Stitch all day Wednesday and Thursday morning. It's a powerful program that you can use to digitize almost anything and then transfer it to your long-arm to stitch out. One class was digitizing TTF fonts. I am really excited to try that out.

The quilts on display are fabulous! There's everything from newbie machine stitchers to the OMG-How-Did-She(or he)-Do-That???? quilts. I love seeing them all!

Mara Novak won first place in her category. She did all of the machine stitching (again, these photos were taken with my iphone!). I should get some detail shots today, yes? It is really stunning how she used the threads to bring out the piecing. She made the star in the center appear bigger and the paisley motif in the border is all thread.

And Joanne Shapp is one of the featured quilters!!! She has done many quilts based on crop circles and they are gorgeous. meticulous. And she is so passionate about the subject. She is speaking at the dinner tonight and I'm really looking forward to it. I am so excited for her, she really deserves this attention.

This quilter, Melissa Sobotka, I don't know, but it blew my mind. Even looking at the photo it looks so three dimensional. There is some photo transfer, but most of it is applique.

a slightly out of focus close up:

I am having a lot of fun this week at the show... I might make reservations for next year before I leave if it hasn't sold out already :)