Good morning everyone!  I’m going to go ahead and jump right in to announcing this weeks’ winners!

Starting this weekend off with the Public Choice Winner.  Taking home 25 of the 128 votes (or approximately 25%) is…

Sally’s Angelworks!  Congratulations Sally!  You’ll be receiving $10 to Fabrics N Quilts and $10 to SpiceBerryCottage.

Kathleen Quilts and her piece ‘Funky Froggy Flowers’. 

Here’s what the judges had to say:

Judge 1: I really like that your fabric is frogs but you made them into fun flowers. If the fabric would have been flowers and you made flowers, I would have found that boring. I like your variety of flowers. I love your vase. The texture is awesome.

I would have preferred to have the binding cut on the bias even though your stitching is on the diagonal. You can never go wrong with striped fabric cut on the bias for a binding.

Judge 2:  I really love the vase. It’s a great use of your stripe. Glad you made the flowers different and added the yo-yo flowerbuds. Love the diagonally quilting. You made a good choice putting this against a dark background for the picture. It really makes the striped binding pop. This stripe might have been nice as a little “flap” with a darker brown binding. Love the stems.

Overall, this is a very nice project. My one criticism is that it tends to hide the large scale print rather than showcase it.

Judge 3: I love how you chose a non-floral fabric of frogs to create a floral element. The funky shapes of the flowers, mixed with the yo-yos and the almost candy-striped border play nicely with the fun focal print. Braiding the stems was a wonderful touch. The dimensional effect of pleating the fabric for the vase really made that element a big part of the focal point, where just using the fabric flat would have been rather ho-hum. Brilliant!

Judge 4: Love the vase – great use of technique. I love seeing interesting garment construction techniques make their way into quilts. I would also have to say that the flowers are my vote for “least likely to have started out as frog fabric.” This is a great demonstration of how any print can take on a different dimension and be used in unexpected but perfectly delightful ways.

I think the piece would have benefitted from a bit more balance. The flower centers seem to be a bit meek and diminutive for the big & bold flowers & they get lost. I would like to have seen the striped binding incorporated elsewhere into the quilt, perhaps as the flower centers or the little yo-yos, or as a ribbon around the cool looking vase – just something to make it a little more cohesive.

Second place, with an average score of 8.86 goes to…

For Quilts Sake and her piece ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom’. 

The judges thought: 

Judge 1: I like this piece. I love your quilting in the simple flowing lines. I like the color combinations and the yellow stripe fabric. I like the embellishing. The only thing you did that I think detracts from the piece is the triangles in the corners. I don’t think they add to the piece; I think they detract.

Judge 2:  A beautiful piece. The little mosaics are wonderful. I really like the vertical yellow stripe that goes through the stripe border. I like to see mitered corners on a striped border. The fibers and beads are a great accent.

Judge 3:  I really like the off center design, balanced with the fiber embellishments. Your color choices in the yellow stripes and burgundy work perfectly with the large print fabric. The technique you used in the blocks is very interesting, and I love that you didn't square them off, but let the edges remain jagged - that allows them to flow with the fiber elements very nicely. The wavy horizontal quilting style works very well with the horizontal embellishments, keeping it balanced.

Judge 4:  I absolutely love the fabric scrap mosaics – you’ve captured the vibrancy of the original fabric in a unique way – I love the layering and the movement this has on closer visual inspection. It’s definitely a quilt that is probably more lovely in person than photos can do it justice. I think the offset squares work well in this layout, and I love the mixed-media aspect.

Things I would recommend for improvement: I would have liked to see more of a “pop” of color somewhere else in the quilt – something unexpected. While the overall color in the quilt was clearly inspired by the large print, I think it would have greatly benefitted from the addition of a blue-green to draw the eye – perhaps in the binding or in the embellishments. The overall effect would have been more dynamic with something a little less “blended”. Introducing more curves (perhaps in the layout or positioning of the embellishments or quilting) would have added more interest to such a geometric layout.

Quilties and her piece ‘Mum-burst Medallion’. 

Congratulations Quilties!  You’ll be receiving $15 to FabricFascination and a pdf of 2 maze quilt patterns from Lisa Penny.

Here’s what the judges thought:

Judge 1: I think my favorite part of this piece is the addition of the blue leaf swag. It just makes the mum go from a really nice mum to a WOW mum.

That stripe is so subtle I had to really look to find it. Your quilting is excellent and very neat.

Great addition to your quilting studio. It is fun to make something for ourselves sometimes!

Judge 2: I really like the 3-D effect you’ve created. Is the flower made of felt? The branch of blue leaves is great. How is that constructed? Nice job with the quilting.

Judge 3: This is such a fun and unique design. It's much more energetic the way you used a spinning star, instead of a flat compass style. I love that you went boldly 3d with the flower, and you did a beautiful job crafting it and stitching the petals. Adding the blue leaves was brilliant, as it brought more of the background colors up into the 3d focal point, tying the whole design together nicely. Making the whole piece round really makes it pop off the wall with great interest.

Judge 4: This is probably my favorite piece in the collection, or very near the top. I love the boldness & audacity of the flower, the dimension & texture from the wool felt & fabric leaves, and the movement and flow of the orange star and the quilting. I love the bias binding – it’s a really great use of a stripe.

Things I would recommend for improvement center around proportion and contrast. The center flower, while stunning & gorgeous, nearly overwhelms this small quilt and detracts from the impact of the orange – giving the quilt a more muted effect than probably intended. The striped binding would have been more impactful & visible if it picked up more of the deeper tones such as the brown and orange, and would have given more of a frame for the flower to balance it in the quilt.

I just want to once again thank our judges for their work in critiquing all the pieces!

Diane Lapacek

Barb Raisbeck

Lisa Penny

Guest Judge: Ebony of LoveBugStudios (aka Season 1 Grand Prize Winner)

Stay tuned later today for the winners of the random drawing prizes and the public comment winner – we’re heading out to the Mackenzie Center for the Pancake Breakfast and Maple Syrup Festival!