The 5th Genevieve Awards: The Festival of Quilts 2026
Hello everybody!
Welcome to the Genevieve Awards! Another year at the Festival of Quilts has been and gone. I was exhibiting again this year with my I Spy a Rainbow quilt in the Contemporary category.
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| Me with my quilt - photo kindly taken by a passing steward |
As usual, the halls were packed with many stunning quilts of all descriptions, and I took a gazillion photos (actual number - 1717). There was a new category this year - Original Design - which allowed quilts of a multitude of styles as long as the design was original. And also as usual, while the prize winners were absolutely amazing quilts that I could not have made myself, I still disagreed with the judges choices.
Which brings us to the Genevieve Awards. These are awards I give to the quilts on display at the Festival of Quilts. The only prize for them is the knowledge that I like your quilt. I make up the categories, I decide which quilts go in to the categories, I decide who wins. These are the 5th awards (you can also read the ones for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2019) and the categories change each time depending on what quilts are at the show. Almost all quilts on display at the Festival are eligible for a Genevieve Award with a few exceptions. The exceptions this year are: my own quilt (because obviously I'm too biassed) and the Joy of Quilting category (because the whole point of entering your quilt in that category is to not have it judged). Other than that, all quilts on display, including individual artist exhibitions, graduate showcases, historical collections and guild challenge quilts could potentially receive a Genevieve Award! However, any one quilt can only appear in one Genevieve Award category, although as you will see there are several quilts that could easily be placed in more than one category.. Links to artists' Instagrams or websites will be given where I can find them. If they gave their IG handle or website in the Festival programme, that link is preferred. All pics taken by me, all spelling mistakes/typos also my own - feel free to reach out for corrections or missing links.
I wish I could show all the quilts and have loads of categories, but if I did that I would never finish writing this. So I choose an arbitrary place to stop when I feel like it/run out of steam. This year we have a total of 10 categories (including the Joy of Quilting Highlights and a Special category) making it our biggest year yet!
So on to the Awards!
Quilts featuring circles
A returning category, having previously appeared in 2023. Circles were the big theme of the quilts at this year's festival. While I didn't see quilts that were actually circle-shaped so many quilts had big circles, things in circles or just random dots added over the top of things. Narrowing down this category was hard, and you will definitely see circles featuring again in the other categories - I will be pointing them out.
Entry 1 - Giant Nested Curves My Way by Nilufer Algas
Some big circles in my favourite colour, blue. And the circle theme is taken even further with circular quilting shapes. A nice, clean graphic display of the shape.
Entry 2 - A Life at Stake by Tina Somme Paaske
This piece is a network of gold circles, each one individually quilted with floral designs. According to the artist's statement it is meant to look like a table set for a family dinner, with the circles representing plates, and red wine stains visible on the tablecloth.
Entry 3 - Harmony of Silence (2026) by Judith Lyons
This all-white miniature quilt is made of a thick, hard material - definitely not a quilting cotton. The artist says in her statement that it is intended to challenge the idea of quilt being a warm, comforting blanket, and it most definitely achieves that in my opinion. And what it certainly does contain is three circles.
Entry 4 - Three-Body Problem by Alison Tonï
Three brightly coloured actual circles! According to her statement, the title of this piece is astronomy themed because she used to work at an observatory. As an art piece, I love the bright colours and its chaotic, swirling energy.
Entry 5 - Broken Mandala by Aitchbee
This quilt has an interesting banner-like shape to it. What I particularly like about this series of concentric circles is that they have so much going on in them, like the flying geese in the details pic and you can also spot trees, lotus flowers and cubes in other places on the quilt.
Entry 6 - Fortuitous Orbits by Andrea Noll (IG in German)
This quilt is made up of a variety of different types of circle block designs, but I do think they come together to form a harmonious whole. The artist calls them 'Fortuitous' because the fabrics actually came from a fabric lottery (the colours, especially the blues, are brighter in person than they appear in my photo) so the piece came together partly by chance.
Entry 7 - Ornamental Wheels by Megan Manwaring
While most the quilts in this circle category are very modern in style, this one is a much more traditional take on the idea of a circle quilt. These are floral needleturn appliqué designs, similar to the Baltimore Album style of design, worked in bright, complementary, modern fabrics.
Entry 8 - Amplify by Daisy Aschehoug
This quilter - who specialises in curved and circle piecing - had her own gallery at the Festival this year. She was also very friendly to talk to, and runs workshops in Svalbard during the dark season, which must really be quite something. This was my favourite of her quilts - I really like the use of colour in it.
Entry 9 - Balls of String by Beverley Bennett
These scrappy crazy string-pieced balls are a much more fun take on the concept of a circle. Just because a circle is breaking the boundaries of the traditional quilt shape (which is a square) doesn't mean you can't be playful with it.
Entry 10 - Standing Stones by Victoria Miller
A 3D quilt of a stone circle! Unfortunately the photograph doesn't capture the experience of seeing this one in person, because we were provided with 3D glasses so that it could jump out the cloth at us. A very clever idea, beautifully worked.
Entry 11 - Pride Around the Word by Matt Wilding
In a circles category I couldn't leave this one out. This is the utterly insane concept that is a 2-metre wide quilted inflatable sphere, with interlocking rings and concentric circles in the colours of the inclusive pride flag. It was the very deserving winner of the Quilted Creations category at the show.
Entry 12 - Full tilt quilt by Jenny Haynes and Iva Steiner
This quilt manages to make 'neon pastel rainbow' into a real colour concept and I am here for it. The circles are beautifully enhanced by its very dense long-arm quilting
Entry 13 - Moving on by Pachy Sarmiento M
Four colourful circles, with quarter-circles in the centre picking out an off-kilter square. It's a pity I didn't get a detail pic of this one, because it has some lovely dense quilting echoing the circle shapes within them and picking out another circles in the very middles between the four coloured shapes.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Quilt in the shapes of circles! Scrappy, bright and fun.
Rainbow Quilts
The only category to appear every time so far is back! There was a point where I thought it might not be here this year - there was definitely a noticeable drop in the number of rainbow quilts present - but fortunately there are still enough Festival quilters who appreciate rainbows out there, and my quilt was not representing the genre alone.
Entry 1 - Crystallization by Aitchbee
Starting off in the Miniature quilt category. These tiny quilts are less than 30cmx30cm square. I am a big fan of this particular artist, AitchBee, as she does a lot of mathematical and geometric quilts and you can see those influences in this design. I was lucky enough to get chatting with her in the queue to pick up our quilts after the show. This one is constructed with Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP) which is her favourite technique to use.
Entry 2 - My dream come true by Antje Sambale and Angela Rudolph (website in German)
Batik fabrics against a black background are always striking and this is a particularly lovely example. According to the artists statement, she used over 90 different coloured fabrics in the creation of this quilt. They are so beautifully blended together that I honestly hadn't realised there were that many - I had assumed it was fewer carefully placed variegated fabrics.
Also - a border of overlapping circles!
Entry 3 - Artist's Palette by Balthazar Battais
This beautiful little piece is all the more impressive for having been made by a 12-year-old artist. The gradient he has achieved is just great.
Entry 4 - Sally Kelly Coat by Nicola Daniels
Modelled by the artist at the Wearable Fashion Show, this quilted coat looks like it would fun and joyous to wear. You can't see it clearly in the photo but she also made herself a pair of matching sneakers. It is named for the designer of the fabrics.
Entry 5 - Bubbles of Hope by Brigitte Didier
Bright, graphic rainbow bubbles. These are instantly cheering to look at. In the artist's statement she says she created this to bring her joy during a sad time. Also, it's another quilt on the circle theme.
Entry 6 - Interstellar Suite by Dan Burke
This little FPP mini wasn't in the main competition, but was instead in a gallery chock-full of quilts called 'Men who Quilt'. The spiralling shape is based on a central hexagon, which obviously appeals to my hexie-loving soul and the rainbow gradient is done beautifully.
Entry 7 - Prideburst by Zandra Lea
This miniature quilt - which was in the main competition - picked up a Judges Choice award and it's easy to see why. The exquisite FPP piecing, combined with the stunning quilting make for a very striking little quilt indeed.
Entry 8 - Put in the Pink by Kristen Hubert
Entry 9 - Kaleidoscope Garden by Kate Middlebrook
This is a traditioanal EPP design, interpreted in a striking rainbow of modern fabrics, given energy by the fussy cut dots and the strictly vertical strips. It's a big, busy and beautiful work.
Entry 10 - Prismatic by by Jane Burnham-Slipper and New Threads Quilt Shop
Another great big colourful riot of bright batiks on a black background. I like how the design has blocks that almost look squashed around the outside and more open towards the middle.
Entry 11 - Orla's adventure quilt by Fay Harrison and Graham Farrcorner
This is a lovely, personal interpreatation of the Tula Nova pattern to which the maker has added their child's Guide and Brownie badges. According to the artists' statement it is actively used as a camping blanket. I think this is a beautiful way to make it a one-of-a-kind quilt.
Entry 12 - The Rainbow of Curves by Pat Gordon
Bright improv-style curves come together to make an irregularly shaped quilt. The addition of the black lines on the edges of some of the curves gives the piece a nice definition and brings it together. I like the enrgy and movement in this quilt.
Entry 13 - Crazy Horses by Sarah Gill
This gets its place here thanks to its rainbow backgrounds, which the artist has cleverly arranged to form an impression of land and sky. It's a joyful, scrappy harmonious quilt which is very suited to the fact that it was made as a wedding present for two women.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Put in the Pink by Kristen Hubert
Rainbow concentric squares (with added pink) take the day.
Butterfly and Moth Quilts
A new category for this year! Quilts featuring butterflies, butterfly fabrics or elements of butterfly wings were a leitmotif at the show this year.
Entry 1 - Moth Madness by Liz Lewis and Niccy Smith
This is a fun quilt, with so much variety of fabric on display. The two artists state that they were making these moths as a way of using up their scraps. The blocks all come together to create a lovely joyous night sky of colour.
Entry 2 - In a Forest Glade by Tatiana Gitt and Natalia Moskaleva (IGs in Russian)
This is a cute quilt, it has almost the effect of looking through a window, or a microscope at a little world of insects and flowers. Which is one of the many things that can be done with a circle! The colours and shapes give it a sort of child-like quality. The artists call it 'a study of the miscrocosm through the prism of modern textile graphics'. Also, it has a big circle in it!
Entry 3 - Zen Garden Behind Time by L.C. Northcutt
The colours of this quilt were what struck me first. But looking closer you see all the amazing detail in it, from the exquisitely neat appliqué of the butterflies and birds to the hand-guided long-arm quilting filling all the large expanse of the colourful batik fabric. The artist states the project took 11 years, and with this level of detail I am not surprised.
Entry 4 - Butterfly effect by Isabel Muñoz
This wonderful array of colours and swirls is actually made of satins and velvets rather than quilting cottons, giving it the most incredible texture and shine in person. The artist has also made the unusual choice of making the butterfly the paler object on a brighter background.
Entry 5 - Butterfly by Becky McVittie
Another big, beautiful butterfly. What I particularly liked about this one was the interesting fabrics and techniques used to get the different textures in the colourful details.
Entry 6 - Nami's Butterfly by Kathryn Beale
A lovely little two-tone miniature quilt. What I really like about this one in the hand quilting and trapunto that gives the 3D effect you can see in the detail pic. The artist mentions in her statement that she was inspired by the butterfly brooches of Nami Horikawa.
Entry 7 - Butterflies by Donna Hanmer
A less pictorial interpretation of the butterfly theme, and no my camera/photo isn't wonky - the quilt is deliberately made with a wonky border! This EPP mandala-type shape is worked with bright colours and butterfly prints, and the butterfly theme is continued with the hand quilting in the large border space.
Entry 8 - Going, Going, Gone by Jenny Knight
This beautiful triptych is a commentary on the decline in habitat for out butterfly and pollinator populations, made more forcefully by being entered in the Sustainable Category - meaning at least 75% of the materials used to made it are repurposed. In this case the butterflies are made of sweet wrappers and the dragonfly wings from a CD. An excellent message and a very fine piece of sewing as well.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Butterfly effect by Isabel Muñoz
A big, shiny, happy butterfly quilt.
Quilts with dragons (or similar cryptids)
Who doesn't love a dragon? I am so glad there were enough beautiful ones on display this year that I could make this a category.
Entry 1 - Prayer for Peace by Luana Rubin
Entry 2 - The Return of the King by Jung Sun Lee (IG in Korean)
Red and gold are excellent striking colour choices here. This also has some beautiful trapunto work (a type of padded quilting), and a background of pieced log cabins as I have tried to show in the second detail photo. The artist states that this is a redesign of the Korean monarch's symbol of a dragon, worked in the longing of the emergence of a worthy, reliable leader. Also, another circle!
Entry 3 - The Secret Keeper by Lena Pugachova
Look at this guy! He definitely knows something he's not telling. Also look at the detail pic - that 3D eye, and the use of the quilting to show the scales are both inspired choices. And I do love the composition, curled round a stained glass rose window. This is just a great, classic fantasy image.
Entry 4 - Saving the Princess by Victoria Miller
This quilt is made in the One Block Wonder style - a panel is placed in the centre and then six identical panels are layered on top of each other and cut into equilateral triangles which are then used to create hexagon blocks that are arranged around the central panel. The result is a stunningly framed piece that is both cleary pictorial and clearly patchwork. Anyway, this more than qualifies for this category, with a total of 5 dragons.
Entry 5 - Horatio by Bronwyn Hill
Horatio here is a Hippocampus, not a Dragon - this is what the 'similar cryptids' disclaimer is for! It's my rules anyway, so I say he has a place in this category. Look at all the beautiful squares of patchwork making up his tail, and the detailed quilting enhancing the shapes. He certainly looks like he belongs in that water.
Entry 6 - Welsh Dragon by Unknown Maker
As you can see from the pic, this quilt was not part of the competition, but was instead on the side of a Sewing Machine Company Stall to advertise what their machines can do. But like I say, it's my rules and any quilt in the Festival can be eligible! And congrats to whoever did make this, it's definitely a great showcase of fabrics and techniques.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Prayer for Peace by Luana Rubin
The halo of light around the head is mostly what sealed the victory for this one.
Quilts with Sea birds
Yes it's another animal category, but again these particular birds were in abundance this year. There were puffins, penguins and other sea birds making their way on to all sorts of types of quilts.
Entry 1 - Pixillated Puffins by Sally Layburn
Adapted from a cross-stitch pattern and made with bright batik fabrics, this is such a happy quilt. I am always in awe of people who make pixel quilts - it's just so many tiny little square fabric to sew together (and line up correctly!), and in pictorial pieces like this there are very few strippy shortcut methods.
Entry 2 - Life in Silence by Yoshiko Kayama
Truth be told I don't know what sort of bird this is, but it has the sort of grey plumage and body shape common among seabirds, so I am going to count it here. This piece is entirely worked by hand - hand appliqué and embroidery - which is unusual for this sort of pictorial quilt. It's very impressive work.
Entry 3 - Puffins Aloft by Frances Holmes Burlingham
More puffins - but a very different patchwork take on them. The piecing of these blocks reminds me of log cabin blocks. I like the choice of purple for the sawtooth star blocks in the middle of the quilt, too. According to the artist's statement, the purple was their wedding colour, and they pieced this over their honeymoon, which is a sweet back story.
Entry 4 - Title Unknown by Ria Davies
This adorable little guy was in one of the Graduate Showcase booths. I love him so much. I am worried he is about to crash once he gets through that opening, though.
Entry 5 - Chill & Thrill by Rugilé Stanyté, Magic Little Dreams
Look at these adorable simple patchwork penguins on icebergs! They are so cute. I particularly like the little one diving into the sea in the bottom right.
Entry 6 - Penguins All Around by Sue Sherman
This is a miniature quilt with piecing so ridiculously tiny it's hard to wrap your head around it. And it has similarly ridiculously tiny hand quilting stitches, for which it rightly took the Hand Quilting award in the competition (the maker describes it in her artist's statement as 'a very slow, but suprisingly relaxing activity'). The penguins themselves are painted on, based on her own photos.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Pixillated Puffins by Sally Layburn
Anyone with the patience to put together that many pixels in a pixel quit has my deep and abiding respect.
I-Spy Quilts
A new and different category for this year! As my quilt is an I-Spy it is only fitting to have a special category in honour of the concept. This category is for quilts that invite you to look at all their many details, or who have little hidden treasures for the eagle-eyed to spot.
Entry 1 - Four Seasons, Many Stitiches by Jo Lewis
For a quilt that is less than 30cm square there is just so much going on. Endless different fabrics, all carefully placed - if you zoom in try to spot the ladybirds, the falling leaves and the rainbow. And then it is embellished with embroidery of flowers, branches, leaves and bark, with all sorts of shaped buttons on top of that. There's something new to spot every time you look at it.
Entry 2 - Jan's Year: Place, Movement and Memory by Janice Rydon
At first glance this is just a scrappy hexagon quilt, but if you look closer you can see words, especially places embroidered on to the hexies. And if you look at the pattern of the quilt as a whole you can see it is a Temperature Quilt - a quilt where you record the temperature every day for a year and sew a piece or a block in a colour representing that temperature - typically blues for lower temperatures and oranges and reds for higher ones. I had the luck of speaker to the maker of this quilt, and it is, as the title suggests, a record of a year of her life - with the places she visited embroidered on the hexies representing those days.
Entry 3 - Out of the Blue by Julie Nyanyo
This little scrappy crazy quilt is a celebration of blue - my favourite colour - and I took so many detail pics because there are so many details to spot! Mostly relating to words and phrases about the colour blue. The ones against the striped background are actually from the back of the quilt because why limit all the fun to one side when we are making 3D objects?
Entry 4 - The Measure of a Man by Devida Bushrod and Rochelle Rice
This quilt is one where you have to both see it at a distance at up very close to fully appreciate it. It's impossible to photograph the experience of seeing pixel portrait quilts in person. When you are right in front of this quilt you can't see the image of the man clearly at all. And there isn't space to step back very far as you ideally would at the show. But the second you hold the lens of the camera up in front of you, the image jumps out. The real hidden gem of this quilt, however, you do have to get up close to see - because it's in the quilting. The man in the portrait (Joseph Thatcher) is a quilter himself and so his hat is quilted with images of sewing - scissors, pincushions, rotary cutters, spools of thread. And to show their appreciation of him the background around him is quilted with crowns. The artists put so much love and care into showing their appreciation of their friend through this quilt.
Entry 5 - Dream Walking by Helen Moffat
This beautiful dreamscape is made of raw edge appliqué onto an EPP background. But there is so much to see in that background. For a start, it's not all traditional EPP - some hexies in the trees have deliberately been placed backwards so you can see their raw seams. And clearly we shop for our fabrics in the same places - see if you can spot any of this selection in the pics above.
Entry 6 - Iain's Compass by Jennifer Dodds
This is a traditional Mariner's Compass quilt, (triangular pieces set in a circle shape to look like a compass) surrounded by non-fussy cut EPP hexies, so why have I included it in the I-spy category? Because there are four little fun details hidden in the picture. You can zoom in to try and spot them for yourself before you scroll down for the detail pics.
They are a beach holiday, a treasure island, a lighthouse and shipwreck, and Nessie! It shows that you can add as sense of I-Spy fun to any quilt.
Entry 7 - Blue tone II by Aki Sakai
This is not a big quilt, but every inch of it is packed with tiny embroidery and embellishment details. The repeated references to the number 30 are because this was made in celebration of the maker's 30th wedding anniversary (apparently Blue Tone I was made for their 20th). There are just so many things to spot of two people having lots of simple, happy times together. There's lots of little circles to spot, too.
Entry 8 - Where's the Tipping Point by Sue Sherman
In this enormous pictorial quilt, the first thing you spot with your little eye is how the animals moved from being normal on the left hand side to increasingly distorted as you get nearer the slashed part at the bottom right. But the real I-spy element of this quilt is in the quilting in the sky, which is full of words, saying 'Tipping Point' and lots of places and processes that are reaching tipping points for the Earth's climate. It's a clever way of using the I-Spy notion to get the viewer to look and think closer about the impact of human beings on the climate of the Earth we all share.
Entry 9 - Corgi Heaven by Katie King
A cute doggy quilt here. The I-spy element of this is the different fabrics used to make the dogs' backs - the 12 corgi each have a fabric representing a different month of the year, making this a calendar quilt. You can see October in the detail pic with some Halloween fabric. The artist has continued the calendar theme by using a Christmas design in the quilting.
Entry 10 - Big Cat Dreams by Heather M Riseborough
This is a crazy quilt, the whole point of which is to have all sorts of different fabrics of all shapes and sizes all mixed up together. And for this one, the artist has decided on a theme of cats and big cats. Wherever you look there are cats and lions peeking out at you, and the fun in looking at this piece is trying to spot all the different ones. I love the lion with the flower crown.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Because it's blue! (Da ba dee, da ba dai... - I think that's about the only reference not stitched into this quilt somewhere.)
Quilts with faces
A returning category for this year, having first appeared in 2024. This category is for portrait quilts or any quilt prominently featuring the faces of people or animals. As in 2024 this continued to be a big theme, with collage quilts, pixel quilts and other techniques on display.
Entry 1 - Beltane by Deena Beverley
A whole array of techniques, including quilting, embroidery and appliqué have combined with a selection of vintage materials to form this striking portrait of a woman's face, decorated in florals. I like the bright colour used in the border here.
Entry 2 - Space Oddity by Esther Tronchoni and Peter Hayward
Because why wouldn't you make a quilt of an owl astronaut drinking coka on the moon and name it after a David Bowie song? There's lots of different materials and techniques going on here, but the whole thing is just a clear, striking image and a face with a lot of personality.
Entry 3 - Chisingalalo = Joy by Julianne Walther
Based on a photograph, the joy from the title of this quilt absolutely radiates out of it. It captured my attention every time I walked past it. It's beautifully made using machine appliqué.
Entry 4 - Frances by Jeanne Eileen Garcia Aurora
This was not in the competition but in a gallery of selected quilts from the American quilt show QuiltCon 26. It's a portrait of the artist's mother, constructed by hand piecing with hand embroidery in the hair and in creating it the artist contemplated the influence of her mother on herself.
Entry 5 - Metamorphoses by Saule French
Another pieced face, but an entirely different effect! This design was created by freehand improv doodling and manages to merge a bird, a face and a bed of snowdrops all into one design. Seeing this quilt reminds me of why doodling and improvising is so important to and we should all do more of it.
Entry 6 - Mother Earth by Sarah Pitcher
A bright, striking face split in half to show the dualities of life and death, dark and light, decay and renewal. It is an original design and entirely Foundation Paper pieced.
Entry 7 - La Catrina by Kristy O'Connor
This was a quilt I kept coming back to. It's a bright quilt made in the pixel quilt style with so many tiny little squares. This was apparently inspired by Lego art by Gerardo Pontiérr and is of course an amazing Día de los Muertos character.
Entry 8 - Audrey by Anja Fuchs
This quilt is a tribute to the actor Audrey Hepburn. I really like the bright, colourful squares placed haphazardly over the stencil-like image of the face.
Entry 9 - "We can be heroes" by Michelle Jones
Another artist tribute, this time to David Bowie, based on a 1995 photographs by Gavin Evans. The choice of rainbow colours here is interesting, although it does make me think a bit of a thermal imaging camera.
AND THE WINNER IS...
She turned Lego into a quilt! How awesome is that.
Joy of Quilting Highlights
This category at the Festival is a place where quilters can display their quilts without entering the competition directly, so they receive no judges comments or feedback, but also are not eligible for any prizes. It's a way of encouraging people who want to display without the pressure, but it's also a great opportunity for many quilts that don't fit into any categories (for example, because of their size, or the precise rules on originality) to be shown to the world. These are my highlights from this category - however in accordance with the wishes of the makers, there is no winner here.
Highlight 1 - Hexie Mania (#focuscuttingsewalong2019) and Margot's Quilt both by Colette Dunning
A big shout-out to my fellow participant in the #focuscuttingsewalong and well done to her on the completion of these two quilts (Margot's quilt uses the hexie thirds of the 2025 sewalong). We may have been working with the same prompts but with different fabrics and imaginations we have come up with entirely different quilts. Both of these are beautiful.
Highlight 2 - Swimming amongst the Stars by Sarah Williams
Look at this gorgeous whale, so big he is literally bursting out of the frame of the quilt. The whale himself is appliquéd onto the traditional patchwork background, and then the quilting is used to emphasise the shapes as you can see in the detail pic.
Highlight 3 - The Kiss by Merna Timmins
A One Block Wonder interpretation of the classic Klimt painting. I do like how instead of having a solid frame of hexies it breaks up and fades to black.
Highlight 4 - Hope for Ukraine by Devida Bushrod and Robyn Brown
This striking image of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy using the colours of the Obama Hope posters apparently came to its designer in a dream. A particularly nice detail is that it is quilted with sunflowers - the national flower of Ukraine.
This striking image of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy using the colours of the Obama Hope posters apparently came to its designer in a dream. A particularly nice detail is that it is quilted with sunflowers - the national flower of Ukraine.
Highlight 5 - Jungle Magnolia Starfish by Lisa Leverton
Made as a sample quilt for classes the size of this and the colours are what drew me to it. The gradations in the flame colours are handled beautifully.
Highlight 6 - Braided Rainbow by Regina Maier
This gorgeous rainbow quilt is EPP and made up of tons of tiny scraps, including scraps of clothing holding memories for the artist. There is so much to spot in each colour, I could stare at it for hours.
Highlight 7 - Diamonds with a difference by Mary Mountifield
One of several quilts entered by this artist in the Joy of Quilting category this year. And so massive it was literally dragging on the floor (organisers - that was happening with a few quilts this year and it really shouldn't - do better next time!). This one is just such a joyful, riotous burst of colour, I came back to look at it several times.
Genevieve's Favourite
The big category! No rules at all here, just quilts that caught my eye and made me smile or say wow.
Entry 1 - The Mogs on Parade by Georgie Hodgson
Lots of moggies in bright happy fabrics! This one made me smile every time I went past it.
Entry 2 - Silly Goose by Tara Shiver
It's a goose on the loose with a knife! Another one that's here simply because it makes me smile. Also, I don't want to get on the wrong side of this goose.
Entry 3 - Wiejskie wesele / The Peasant Wedding by Graźyna Ryszawa (IG in Polish)
This quilt is so clever. Not only is it an excellent rendition of a painting as a quilt - something I always find impressive - but the frame is quilted. That concept alone made me say wow.
Entry 4 - The Skies of Scotland by the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild
The Edinburgh MGQ knock their group entry out the park again with this gorgeous Saltire (Scottish flag) quilt made up of dozens of improv crosses. Their effort is always stunning, so I am surprised to note that this appears to be their first Genevieve Award nomination. It's big, it's bold, it's blue and I photographed it twice because I was afraid I'd missed it the first time.
Entry 5 - Never Stop Quilting by Iva Steiner
A comic-book fight captions style quilt! It's the sort of big bold graphic shapes and bright colours that always appeal to me. And as you can just about see in the detail pic, it has lots of beautiful, meandering dense quilting in the background and then none on the letters so the letters physically stand out more. Also, another instance of circles.
Entry 6 - Vesta by Julia Wachs, longarm quilting by Jana Royal
This stunning art deco style quilt is another one I kept coming back to. I love all the colours and shapes in it - it has a sort of Egyptian-inspired feel to it.
Entry 7 - The Season of Cherry Blossom by Sachiko Yoshida
Look at this gorgeous rainbow of tumbling cherry blossoms, appliquéd over simple, scrappy patchwork squares. This artist had her own gallery. I spoke to her interpreter and her works are hand sewn and made of reclaimed second-hand kimono silks.
Entry 8 - Autumn Whisper, Winter Breath by Sylwia Ignatowska
A One-Bock Wonder quilted coat! (I considered making One Block Wonder quilts a category this year. This is the third with a nomination). What makes this quilted coat stand out from the others at the show is not just the stunning colours, but how intentional the placement of everything in it is. This has been designed and thought out so carefully.
Entry 9 - To my only me (think of Moai) by Aeran Kim (IG in Korean)
Silhouetted statues at sunset. It's the colours and subject matter that drew me to this quilt, but if you look at the detail pics, you can see that the construction is incredibly clever. It's made made of hundreds of squares, many pieced, quilted so that they all appear to have circles in the centre of them. Often the piecing creates larger circular patterns. I don't know how you begin to conceive and plan a work like this.
Entry 10 - Come Fly With Me by Mandy Gowers
Look at this beautiful, brightly-coloured macaw, worked int appliqué and free-motion embroidery. He has so much personality in his face and he is clearly inviting us to join him in flight. Either that or boasting about the size of the fish he caught.
AND THE WINNER IS...
THEY MADE A QUILTED FRAME! I love this so much.
Special Award for Mathematical Quilts
The return of this category, previously seen in 2023. Being a Maths Professor's daughter, mathematical quilts are very dear to me, so I wanted to honour two excellent examples from this year's show. There is no single winner in this category - both quilts are equal winners.
Fibonacci Fandangle by Linda Crouch
This is a representation of the Fibonacci sequence using New York Beauty blocks. The blocks are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 13 inches in size (the opening numbers of the sequence). This means that she successfully sewed New York Beauty blocks - a complex, difficult block with lots of small pieces at any size - into 1-inch squares. This is impressive Foundation Paper Piecing skills.
Oriented Hats by Emma Laughton
An einstein hat quilt! I made one of these in 2023 when the discovery of the shape was newly announced, and it is always good to see more people developing it as a quilting shape. This artist has sensibly divided each hat into 4 'crowns' for English Paper Piecing purposes. Her choice of fabrics and colours here is very deliberate, with one fabric for each orientation of the shape.
So there you have it! So what do you think? Do you agree with my categories and choices? Which quilts would you have given awards to? Let me know what you think!
And I leave with you with one more quilt - there's always at least one quilt designed for Instagrammable moments, this year it was You are an Icy Angel by Suzanne Pass. Thanks to the passers-by for taking the pic.
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