Houston Festival

I travelled to Houston last week to be at the Awards Ceremony and spend a bit of time at Quilt Festival. My dear friend, Moira Cannata, won third place in the Traditional Pieced Category. Unfortunately she passed away earlier this fall so it was a bittersweet time.

Here are pictures of our friend, Jill, and I in front of Moira's quilt, Last Chance, Last Dance and some closeups. Moira was known for taking the smallest scraps of fabric and making them 'dance' through her sewing machine!

Westshore Quilters Guild

I attended the Westshore Quilters Guild meeting last night along with members of my weekly quilt group. We wanted to hear the program talk and quilt show presented by one of our members. Moira Cannata made her first quilt as a teenager. She has been quilting ever since. Moira has had 15 quilts accepted for Quilts, A World of Beauty, the most pretigious juried international quilt show. The show is held in Houston, Texas, each fall and is attended by over 30,000 quilters each year!

One of the main topics Moira presented was about the history of the quilting tradition. How the practice of fibre art created by women has evolved and been passed on through the generations. She believes it is critical for all quilters to enter shows to display our work for the public to see - whether we win awards or not. And, as a traditional quilter, Moira encourages others who work in this area to keep this area of quilting alive by submitting their work for exhibit.

Here are pictures of a few of the quilts Moira brought for the guild to see.

Moira's Monsterpiece is one hundred 4 inch blocks - using lots of scraps (some from members of our group). Moira sets goals to make a few blocks each day. This is how she creates many of her quilts.

Quilts at an Exhibition is a display of many of Moira's previous quilts - all made in miniature size. Several of these designs were shown at the Houston show.

The Eye of the Needle has 1 1/2" blocks - THOUSANDS of small pieces. I watched as Moira made this exquisite design and marvelled at how she began with the centre block and designed the rest of the quilt as she went along. Amazing!

This is the quilt Moira is working on now. It is called 'Last Chance' - the last chance for these scraps to make it into a quilt. Moira has also incorporated silk into this piece. I'm sure I will see it hanging in Houston in the future!