PIQF 2010

This is going to be a very image heavy post!

Today I went to PIQF (Pacific International Quilt Festival) in Santa Clara, Ca. I've never been before and wanted to check it out. It's a combination of contest and vendor booths. I planned for it to be an all day thing but was slightly dissapointed in it once I got there and saw what it was all about. Don't get me wrong, it was amazing and impressive for sure. I just tend to lean towards the more contemporary and young, cool and hip quilting styles. I found most of the booths to be very traditional (old lady) and not my style. I did walk around and check out the quilts on display and was amazed at the incredible variety and skill level. My quilts aren't even 1/100th as good as the ones I saw! They were amazing! I took pictures of quite a few of them and while I don't necessarily like all of them I wanted to show you the breadth of quilting styles out there. There really are no limitations, you can go wherever your imagination takes you!  I did find two booths that had items that were up my alley. I'll share my purchases with you in another post. And without further ado... here are the quilts...

Yes, this is a quilt...

Love the colors in this one

I took this one for my sister... can anyone else recognize what inspired this one?

This one had little swarovski crystals all over it so it was sparkly! I had never seen that done before!

This one had crystals too, I couldn't really capture the sparkle...

Fabulous and graphic

Um, wow... seriously?

This was one of the winners. It was amazing. It wasn't really a typical or traditional quilt. It had two seperate layers. It was hard to capture in a photo.

Can you tell that the quilted squares are on a cheeseclothy/meshy layer above the feed sacks in the background?

Very cool...

Close up of the quilting

Hawaii inspired

Very traditional

This was incredibly unique, it's art. It was inspired by the story of a homeless man who was killed. Can you see that the quilting that runs horizontally looks like the lines on a monitor in the hospital?

Another artistic piece...

Not to say that they aren't all wonderfully artistic! There were so many wonderful examples of people's imaginations come to life in fabric.