International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX for 2022 is in the books. Festival, as it is affectionately known, is the big show each year in Houston. It is held at the end of October / beginning of November. Quilters from all over the globe come together to celebrate the art of quilting. They enjoy classes, quilt displays, vendors, lectures, and a judged contest. It is a real treat to see the winning quilts.

Handi Quilter is proud to sponsor the Best of Show award for the judged contest. Along with Best of Show, the show presents 5 Master Awards, and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in eight different categories, 1 Viewer’s Choice and 3 Judge’s Choice awards. Quilters world-wide compete each year. Besides bragging rights, the Best of Show award is a $12,500 cash non-purchase prize. The Master Awards are $5000 each.

I took photos of the Best of Show and the Master Award winning quilts so that I could share them with you here. The quilts were, as always, spectacular!

Winning Quilts

Traditional Artistry Award

Sponsored by the Grace Company

This is Aki’s second Christmas quilt. It took a year to finish. The quilt is hand pieced, appliqued, embellished, embroidered, and quilted. Aki made it with the hope that everyone can have a happy Christmas!

Thread Artistry Award

The Thread Artistry award was sponsored by Superior Threads.

The animals are sending a message to humans offering their opinion about the state of things. If you zoom in and look closely, you can see where the humans have filled the sky with their empty talk about addressing habitat loss and climate change, but don’t do enough to help.

The quilt is wholecloth cotton painted with thickened dyes.

Machine Artistry Award

sponsored by Gammil

The Corbetts’ love of Native American artwork inspired this collaborative quilt.  They recreated an authentic serape quilt. The quilt consists of 2,426 one-inch pieces, 12 thread colors and over one million quilting stitches. Twenty eight digitized quilting designs were created from traditional vintage pottery artwork from the Acoma, Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo people.

Contemporary Artistry Award

Sponsored by eQuilter.com

This quilt is an original design inspired by the baskets in the book, Scrape the Willow Until It Sings, by Deborah Valoma.

“Baskets are like stories – If you listen, they will tell you something.” – Deborah Valoma

Inspired by California and Nevada Piute Tribes’ winnowing baskets, this quilt is a deconstructed version to allow viewing of the weaving. The vibrant colors show the beauty of the rituals involved in creating baskets. Quilting is in a basketweave pattern.

Innovative Artistry Award

Sponsored by Janome

Susan’s favorite animals out of Africa are wild dogs or painted wolves. The quilt depicts three young pups walking ahead of the adult dog in the background. Like so many African animals, wild dogs are diminishing in number rapidly from disease. The webbed holes in the quilt represent climate change and the effects it has on nature’s wonderful creatures.

Susan used machine applique, free-motion stitching, embellishment, collage, couching and thread sketching.

Best of Show Award

Sponsored by Handi Quilter

This original design is the embodiment of a dream. Not of a finished product but of the journey and the completion of the process. Angela says, “I believed I could, I thought I should, I said I would, and I did.”  Angela machine pieced and quilted this piece. It contains 226,576 pieces!!!

The small squares are foundation-pieced and are 1.5 inches square.

WOW!

Hope you enjoyed seeing these winning quilts! Be sure to put a trip to the International Quilt Festival in Houston on your bucket list because is a must see.

Which quilt is your favorite? Would you ever tackle a quilt with 226,576 pieces?

by Mary Beth Krapil