Monday 8 November 2010

A Silver Lining

After such a rainy grey day back here in the UK, it is good to be reminded that every cloud has a silver lining! Here's an amazing quilt by Susan Stewart. One of the best things about the Houston Quilt Festival is getting to go round the exhibition and meet all the winners. It is customary for the winners to stand with their quilts and take questions. We were able to photograph the quilts and get to know the quilters as we asked questions about materials, techniques and inspiration. What a treat!

Susan Stewart won the $5,000 prize - the Pfaff Master Award for Machine Artistry. This was an amazing quilt and the photos hardly do it justice. You can click on the photos for a better view. Susan noticed our name tags, designating us Superior Threads exhibitors. She told us how much she loved Superior Threads! Susan explained that she used 47,000 yards of #623 Silver from the Bottom Line range of Superior Threads, both on the top and the bottom of this quilt.

As the name suggests, Bottom Line thread was created as a bobbin thread. But once it came out on the market, long-arm quilters tried using it on top and found that it worked!

You can see in the photos how Bottom Line is superb for detail quilting or creating texture without drawing attention to itself. In the Grimm's fairy tale, Rapunzel spins gold from straw. In this quilt, Susan Stewart uses the least expensive thread in the Superior Thread range and spins silver!

3 comments:

Trudi said...

Oh WOW! That is stunning! And how delightful that you could talk with the quilter, what a delight!

Martha said...

Trudi, I have a feeling that you'll be doing this before too long!

















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J said...

oh my that is gorgeous - so much detail and all that thread. hope she is on a nice vacation now.