My trip to PIQF 2011

I rode in style to the Pacific International Quilt Festival at the Santa Clara Convention Center last Friday.

My local quilt store, Queen B’s Quilt Shop in Antioch, chartered a big bus to take 56 of us there.

 The upholstery in the bus was interesting – not the usual industrial blue-gray.

 Del Thomas came up from Southern California for the Festival. I had hoped to meet her there, but she attended on Thursday and Saturday. We were ships passing in the night (really daytime). She took really good pictures of several of the quilts I liked best. So, go to Del’s Blog and see them. It was funny, we didn’t have any communication about the quilts and yet when I looked at her blog she had picked the same ones I had taken pictures of. Her photos are much better than mine.


I’ll just show three quilts that caught my eye. One was funny, another was puzzling, and the third one was special to me.

Linda Laird’s quilt made me laugh out loud. It’s called “My Mom Wasn’t Much of a Cook.” She is from San Diego, CA.

 The sign said:

“Many people have fond memories of their mother’s home-cooking. Well, what if your mother wasn’t much of a cook? Not poisonous or revolting meals, just not very daring or imaginative. This piece uses photos from 1950s – 1960s women’s magazines to show the “alternatives” available to mothers who didn’t quite measure up to the culinary ideals of the times.”
The sayings were fun to read. Click on the photo below to see them larger.

 The puzzling quilt was called “My Hard Life” by Felicia Horowitz.

 It was an ambitious piece. I kept looking at the gauzy bra-like thing and wondering what it was doing there. I called my cousin Sylvia over to see it. I said, “I wonder if it was put on to cover something.” Sylvia looked closely. We couldn’t touch the quilt. It was sewn on, but not with the tiny stitches that were used all over the rest of the quilt.

 I searched for a white-glove lady and had her come over and show me the back of the quilt. Sure enough the stitches holding the gauzy stuff were much larger and did not seem to be part of the original concept. I guess I’ll never know exactly what the intention was.


The third quilt is really lovely. It was made by Tanya Brown and is called “Siesta.”

 You really should click on the close-up photo to see the stitches. Amazing.

 My quilting daughter-in-law, Toni, lives in San Jose and she had gone to the Festival on the opening day – Thursday. Toni planned to go Friday too because you really can’t take in such a large show in one day. Our quilting cousin, Sylvia, drove down from Oakland. Toni brought her friend Carol and we all toured around together.