Road to California

​Hello StitchyMites from Los Angeles... sorry I'm late again this week but the show has been. very busy and I didn't get a chance to walk the quilts fully and take some photos for this post until yesterday. I'm off home today so next week everything will be back to normal, and not more overseas trips for a few months.

Having never been to Road to California before I really didn't know anything very much about it, other than that it's a show thats been around forever and that I had never taught there before! I would describe it best as a smaller Houston I think. There are lots of nice stalls, around 350 I believe, mostly on the more traditional side of quilting. 

Way less quilts than I was expecting though I have to say!

The quilts that were there though were of course lovely, and there were several Aussies taking home prizes. Sue de Vanny won an Outstanding award for her quilt Born to be Wild 

and Linda Crouch won an Outstanding for Machine Quilting with A Magical Winter Garden. Always fab to see the Aussies doing so well!

Other quilts that caught my fancy were very varied! I loved this little bird by Kate Winegar, she took a class with teacher Maria Shell and learned the techniques she used to make it. The pieced background of triangles is especially wonderful I thought. the quilt is called My Pandemic Pal, as she started it during the pandemic to feature the little nuthatches she was watching out her windows.

This was really one of my favourites!  Ricky Timms is known for his wildlife and nature themed quilts, but the style and colouring of this one is quite different to others of his I've seen. The plaited centres down the sides of the fish and all the curved piecing, and the rainbow colours really make the quilt sparkle in real life - the lighting at these things is never the best. The quilt is called One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

In the abstract section of the show the third place winner was my pick. Left Turn #2 by Barbara Danzi caught my eye - I always like quilts that take traditional quilting shapes (in this case, half square triangles), and turn them to something new. Plus everyone loves a blue and white quilt!

First place in the pieced section was 100% the standout! Amy Pabst foundation pieced Watermelon Sugar on a 1947 Singer Featherweight, and her fabrics include silk dupioni, silk and synthetic blends and velvet, along with traditional patchwork cottons. There are 13, 384 individual pieces in this quilt - and each are tiny slivers of fabric. Each block would only be 4" max finished by my eyeballing. The precision in such tiny piecing is eye popping, and along for the ride there are little slivers of gold silk and textures from the velvet. First place indeed. I included pics to try and convey they detail of the thing to you, but I don't think a photo is ever going to do it justice.

Last but not least is my favourite quilt of the show. Heartwarming Days by Aki Sakai from Japan. The Japanese quilters always bring the jaw droppers and this one. is no exception! The quilt itself is only about 1.5m square I would think - 60". So imagine how teeny all those little pieces of applique are. 

It is entirely hand appliqued, hand pieced, hand embroidered and hand quilted. Each panel has a different sweet little scene in it, and a lot of the pieces are 3D - the little teddy bear above this garden scene for example is an actual seperately made bear, and would be about 1 1/2" tall. 

It's covered in sweet little scenes, and some of the other 3D details include an open oven door! I loved this little hexi embroidered detail too.

The outer border is joined to the inside of the quilt buy all these tiny Suffolk Puffs (in the US you call these yoyos). Theres air between those, no backing of any. kind, and each one is only 1/2" across.

Then theres the "binding" - can we call it binding?? The finishing?? The red border there is the edge of the quilt, which is about 1" wide. It's obviously been faced at the front and turned in a wide strip at the back to finish, and then all along the outside of the quilt are these little blue and red hoops of fabric, with the tiny Puffs mounted between some and little ladies or animals between others. That part is also entirely free standing -  the grey you see there is the curtain that the quilt is hung against.

Thats some work right there peeps!!!

OK its coming on time for me to finish packing up my bags and head to LAX for another 14 hours "across the seas in a tin can full of farts", as Spike Milligan once said!

See you on the other side peeps

Sarah x