QUILT ODYSSEY 2011

I love going to Quilt Odyssey in Hershey, PA each year with my BFF, Mary.  The quilt show itself is international, extremely eclectic, and totally awe inspiring!  This small wall hanging was created by BBD Designs this year especially for Quilt Odyssey.  They also allowed QO to use it on mugs, shirts, totes and to put out a pattern for people to make themselves.  This was in addition to the mugs, etc that had Quilt Odyssey's own design on them.  I bought one of the totes because Mary kept kidding me about dragging around a dilapidated but well-loved book with me in a Food Lion bag.  The book was falling apart, I know, but I really wanted to read it again during this trip.  Apparently we quilters have to dress de rigeur, i.e., if you don't make your own tote, you must have a quiltingly fashionable one -- no plastic bags!  After all, one must keep up appearances...!

The Hershey Lodge is stunning!  Clean, spacious, gracious, well appointed, with cheerful and helpful staff everywhere, it has to be the best hotel I have ever been in. I've been in bigger and more expensive marble filled wonders, but this one, with its two story fireplaces and massive hearths and warmth in their furnishings and color schemes is the best!  This is the upstairs lobby, where the public comes into the massive building for the show.  The downstairs lobby is where the people come in who are staying at the hotel and where one's bags are loaded onto lovely brass trolleys that can carry pretty much your whole travelling sewing room, all the clothes you need and some you don't, your iPad or laptop, extra bags of supplies, food, stuff you bought along the way to the Lodge (because we did just have to stop in Intercourse again this year), stacks of bins with more articles in them -- well, you name it, and we had probably packed it.

This was Viewer's Choice this year.  It's called Fire and Ice, and it was made by Claudia Pfeil from Krefeld, Germany.  Claudia used 55,000 Swarovski crystals.  The least expensive I found these on the internet was 10 gross for $55, which would add up to over $2100 just for the crystals!  What an investment.  The white glove lady tried to tell me that these were all hand sewn on, but they were the flat backs, and those don't have a place on their backs to sew them into anything, whereas the beads do.  So much for that fairy tale. 

 Nonetheless, the appearance was truly amazing, and the quilting was magnificent!  Here's a close up of the ice part, and

here's a close up of the fire part.  Magnify the picture by clicking on it, and you will see not only the swirls, but the tiny, tiny, tiny, less than 1 mm apart lines that have been quilted into this remarkable piece of work.

Just makes you want to run right out and buy some hot glue, doesn't it?  I never think of embellishing my quilts, but it really adds some pizazz!