More from Shipshewana

This is my second year attending the Shipshewana Festival. Last year I was there to teach Schoolhouse sessions, that event happens on Thursday. This year we also had a booth at the Vendor Mall in the Quilt Show.

It is a wonderful festival in an Amish town in northern Indiana. The drive there is totally relaxing as you watch the cities disappear and the corn fields roll by. Every business in town participates in the multi day event that starts on Wednesday and runs through Saturday and it also corresponds with the local Shop Hop.

This year the featured speaker was Kaye England. If you don't know Kaye, you should! She is one of the funniest quilters I know with tons of stories to share. She was a shop owner for years, but she has sold the stores to travel, teach, write and design fabrics. Kaye's personal collection of quilts were displayed in the automobile museum - sorry, I didn't have time to take photos there, but I can tell you that my husband thoroughly enjoyed his visit to see the cars!

The photo above was another of the impressive quilts in the quilt show and vendor mall. Beautiful piecing and lots and lots of quilting to show it off!

This ribbon winning quilt absolutely knocked my socks off! The applique was trapunto, the quilting was done by hand and the over all effect was absolutely beautiful. Look at all those stitches!


What made it even more impressive was the size. This photo shows that quilt hanging next to another ribbon winner.

From a distance I couldn't imagine why this Mariners compass wall hanging didn't have a ribbon on it. The colors are beautiful, the points are precise and the information indicated that it had been hand pieced. Upon closer inspection I could see that the quilting was done by machine. For some reason the quilter decided to quilt each point using a blanket stitch, making it appear that the points had been fused in place. All that handwork and no ribbon!

This Ohio Star quilt has 221 stars that measure THREE inches each! They were all set on point with three inch solid squares between them. Look at the amount of machine quilting there is in each square.

The blue border points were micro stippled and the white ones had these beautiful feathers.

I thought this large bed sized quilt was impressive! Bargello quilts have always been one of my husbands favorites and this multi directional one had him thinking that I should make one for our bed. It had me thinking that he should learn to quilt!

Why not put the Shipshewana Quilt Festival on your list of things to do in June 2012?