QUILTsocial blogger wins Best of Show at International Quilt Festival Spring 2018

All of us at QUILTsocial wish to congratulate one of our very own bloggers Claire Haillot for winning Best of Show at the Chicago International Quilt Festival in April 2018 for her Remembering Sochi Quilt. We are very proud of her for her achievement.

We invited Claire to share her experience and talk about the story that inspired her masterpiece.

Congratulations Claire!

Carla A. Canonico

Editor-in-Chief of QUILTsocial magazine

A Celebration of Color

If you couldn’t make it to the Spring International Quilt Festival in Chicago last April, let me tell you about it. The show is organized by Quilts Inc. and is the premise to the Fall show which takes place in Houston, Texas. The Spring Festival is a great show but is considered smaller than the Fall Festival which regularly attracts 55,000 people from over 35 countries around the world.

There’s shopping at more than 1,000 booths for quilts, fabric, supplies, and crafts, along with 550 classes and lectures for all experience levels. The festival features more than 1,600 quilts and unique works of textile art on display.

The Spring Festival is the debut of their special exhibit ”A Celebration of Color”. I had submitted one of my quilts to be featured in the show last January and was accepted. That was a good reason for me to book a trip to be a part of this great event.

What I truly never expected was to be the Best of Show winner!

The big surprise happened at the end of March: I received a call at 9 pm saying that I had won the Best of Show ribbon. What was my first reaction? I asked them to double check their notes just to make sure there was no mistake. When they reassured me saying that I had won… well, I cried like a baby and said:

I literally couldn’t speak!

When I got to the Spring International Quilt Festival, I noticed that my quilt was located at the very front of the show, with the three 1st place winners. It was very impressive to see all the people going down the stairs and then stopping to look at the four quilts.

Some moved on quickly, but most stayed to see my quilt up close. That’s when they would see the small details and we would start talking about how it was designed. It was a great moment as I got to share my passion/obsession with other quilters who understood what I was saying! Such a relief and a great sense of satisfaction!

It all began in February 2014 when the Winter Olympics began in Sochi. While my husband was watching the hockey games, I was obsessed with the intricate designs around the rink. I realized that there were many uses of the design, in various colors.

I remember seeing multi-colored flags and banners floating around as decorations in the Olympic village and that’s when I started to think that it would make a great quilt!

My five panels represent variations on the banners and are basically a succession of diamond shaped blocks, but it still took me two years of drawing and testing to finally understand how to construct my quilt. Why so long? Cause I’m a teacher at heart!

There are more than 200 different fabrics in this quilt. I knew the quilt needed lots of colors, so I started collecting fat quarters with big prints and lots of colors as of March 2014. The yellows and purples were the most difficult to find as they didn’t have much contrast. And this design needs lots of it to work.

Choosing the color for the border was probably the most difficult part of the whole quilt. I had envisioned it black, but once the panels were finished, it just wasn’t working. I auditioned whites, grays, chocolate, skin tone, even teal but it was the navy that made it all work.

I finally figured out all the details to make the quilt and began piecing it in November 2015. By Christmas, the quilt was off to be quilted by my very talented friend Colleen Paul. I knew exactly how I wanted the panels to be quilted but had no idea on the borders and sashing. Colleen once again worked her magic and quilted beautiful designs that complemented the panels.

While working on the quilt, I would send up-dates to my friend Deborah, founder of PlumEasy pattern. In spring of 2016, PlumEasy Patterns published my pattern calling it “Dancing Diamonds Art Quilt.”

If reading this blog made you wish you had attended the Spring International Quilt Festival: It’s not too late to see my quilt in the special Exhibit ”A Celebration of Color”! You can attend the Fall International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas taking place from November 8th to the 11th.

And if you’re thinking about entering one of your quilts, remember this: Great things can happen when we take a chance, pursue our passion and then exhibit our creativity. You might even win Best of Show!