Most of the quilts featured in the main hall at the AQS Quilt Show were relatively traditional with exquisite and meticulous workmanship.
The auxiliary halls held more modern, creative and artsy quilts, like this one by the incomparable Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry.
Notice how the quilting adds to the design and color selection.
However, the real standout for me was the one that won the Moda Award for Best Wall Quilt:
This is Judith Phelps with her quilt, The Value of Gears. It's densely thread-painted with white thread on black fabric on one side and black thread on white fabric on the other side and ombre sashing.
The center block has real gears incorporated in it.
This quilt has an amazing backstory. Judith is a member of the Cover to Cover Book Club Quilters. For fourteen years, members have been choosing a book to read and then creating a quilt inspired by the book. "Gears" was inspired by the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick, which was in turn inspired by the pioneering French filmmaker, Georges Méliès, and his fascination with mechanical figures called Automata. An Automaton carries out a sequence of operations and was a precursor to today's robots. Martin Scorsese's film "Hugo" was based on the same book.
Méliès lived in the 10th arrondissement and you can still see the building with its "M" on the lintel.
What amazing quilts! And it's good to see that in Paducah, Kentucky, one can find things that trace their lineage to Paris. It delights a Francophile's soul.
Posted by: Jeanne | July 12, 2014 at 08:47 AM