I just returned from teaching for the Tennessee Quiltfest held in Jonesborough, TN. I’m having a hard time trying to decide if I should start with the quiltfest or the town itself. I think I’ll start with the quiltfest and quilt shop and next week I’ll share some photos and information about the town of Jonesborough.
I was invited by Linda Crouch to come and teach for the 12th annual Quiltfest. One of the first things I did was to checkout Linda’s shop: Tennessee Quilts.
When I arrived in town late Tuesday evening the shop was closed so I had to wait until morning to walk down to the shop. When we drove through on Tuesday evening I thought the bottom level of the shop was probably the store and the second floor was storage and maybe classrooms. But no, I was pleasingly surprised to find the shop encompasses both floors.
Here is what the inside of the shop looks like.
The shop is really nice. If you are any where in the area you do want to stop and plan to spend a few hours. As the people who work in the shop as just as nice as they can be. They will make you feel right at home.
On Wednesday I was asked to judge a small group of quilts that were part of a challenge. The challenge was called “Out of the Box”. Everyone wrote a small paragraph about how their quilt related to the theme and some people really went out of the box. There were four main awards, the first being the best Group Quilt. I gave this award to one of the most impressive group projects I have ever seen. Here is a photo of the box with the quilt inside. Darlene and Jeff Neil, husband and wife, collaborated on this project.
Darlene made the quilt and Jeff made the box. Jeff brought in some of his wooden boxes to share with me during our lunch break one day. His work is beyond amazing. You can find out more about his work at www.southernhighlandguild.org/neil
The next award was for Best of Show and it went to Nancy Norwood. The quilt is called “The Marshall Islands”. Nancy made this based on 14 photographs she took. As soon as the show is over she is giving it to her friends who appear in the photos.
I liked the entire quilt but my favorite part were the faces. They were so well done.
Checkout the reflections in the glasses. Awesome.
Nancy shared some of her photos with me and I have to tell you the quilt blocks looked exactly like the photos. I really liked this one of the mailboxes.
And Linda Lyle made “Butterfly Fantasy” which was awarded the best hand quilting. And it was well deserved.
And the final ribbon award went to Kathryn Zimmerman for “Stellar Bright”. This quilt won for the best machine quilting.
I had a great time in Jonesborough. In next week’s blog I will share my photographs from downtown Jonesborough.