Applique Quilts at the International Quilt Festival

I had a very short visit to the International Quilt Festival this year. The above quilt caught my attention because it reminded me of my own grandchild. This quilt was by Japanese quilter Hiroka Miyama, a recreation of a private conversation she witnessed between her grandchild and her golden retriever.
I also was fascinated by the next two quilts with their all over applique, it was like looking at tapestries. The first was by Deborah Kembel from Santiago, Chili. I came back to this quilt several times and saw new details each time. The next quilt was by Liz Jones from Herefordshire, United Kingdom (it really is an INTERNATIONAL quilt festival) and her applique method was the satin stitch,beautiful work.
Because applique quilts are my favorite I really wanted to study how they were quilted, especially the background quilting or fillers behind the applique blocks. For the rest of this post I am going to show a picture of the quilter's name and quilt description and then a picture of the whole quilt picture, and finally the close ups of the quilting. I thought it was interesting the quilter divided the block in quarters and did simple parallel quiting lines in different directions on opposing quarters.

The feather quilting with the flower motif corner stones was a good hiding effect over the block seam lines. The applique background was a dual line cross hatch

I really like traditional applique quilts and was happy to see this red and green four block applique quilt. The quilting does not show wellbut there were feather motifs surrounded by echo quilting.I did not get the picture of the entire quilt on this next one, but I was so glad to see that just a simple stipple is still used as the background.

The next quilt was quilted with cross hatching as a background filler.

In conclusion, as I work on two applique album quilts and wonder how I am going to quilt them, I have decided you can not go wrong with the classics: cross hatch, echo, or stipple, but a few feathers or other quilting motifs thrown in for interest is always fun.

I have saved my favorite quilt designer for last, the applique background quilting is a cross hatch. It was a joy to see Sue Garman's Friends of Baltimore in person.

Happy Stitching All