Our 3rd adventure of the year finds us in Newport, Oregon during the first weekend of August for the Annual Quilts by the Sea show. This is our 2nd time attending this show and it’s always a lot of fun to head to the coast from the inland desert to escape the heat.

The show is held at the Newport Recreation center and upon entering they have 2 gyms stuffed with over 300 quilts to admire.

Like most of the quilt shows we go to, when you first enter you see numerous patriotic quilts that are for the Quilts of Valor. These are always beautiful and go to a good cause.

When you submit a quilt for most of the shows, you can elect whether or not to have it judged. Sometimes you want the feedback so you can improve your techniques, but other times you just want to show what you made and not bother with the judging. This show had five special ribbons awarded by Elizabeth Spannring who is a certified quilt judge for both the National Association of Certified Quilt Judges and the Canadian Quilters Association/ACC.

This was the “Best of Show for the Wall” called Another Day constructed and quilted by Gloria Zirges. This quilt was inspired by a family photo that was taken on the Dakota prairie early in the 20th century. It is really an amazing quilt.

This quilt was awarded “Best of Show for the Bed”, it’s called Hexi Zenn and was contructed and quilted by Tina McCann. If you can zoom into the picture you can see the entire quilt was hand quilted and looks absolutely amazing. The quilt was hexagonally paper foundation pieced.

Here’s a close up of one of the blocks.

The next quilt was the Judge’s Choice award, it was called Baby Baby and was constructed and quilted by Paulette Stenberg – the pattern is called Just Can’t Cut It. This is an embroidery block quilt.

The “Golden Needle Award” went to Carol Nelson who constructed the quilt and the Bayshore Quilters, which she is a member of, who did the hand quilting. The quilt design was a block of the month from the OCQG.

Here’s a close up of the hand quilting.

The last special award was called the NACQJ Award of Merit Ribbon. The comments for this quilt state:

Shippo tsunagi is a traditional Japanese motif symobolizing eternal peace and happiness. Technique used in construction is Japanese folded patchwork. Fabric is from a vintage kimono bought in Kyoto and is hand-tied (shibori) indigo (aizome).

This quilt is called Seven Treasures and was contructed and quilted by Judy McCoy.

Michele & I generally try and find our own favorites at each quilt show we attend. With so many quilts to choose from it really is difficult to do, but we each finally settled on our own favorites. Michele’s favorite quilt was a miniature quilt called Tetra pieced and quilted by Tina McCann – it’s a pineapple block. You can see how small this is when referencing size to the ribbons.

My favorite quilt was called Southwest Improv, coincidentally also contructed and quilted by Tina McCann, it was an original design. I just really liked the randomness of the design as well as the bold colors.

Another neat thing that happens at this quilt show is that the Latimer Quilt & Textile Museum in Tillamook comes down and does a bed turning with their historic quilts. I overheard them on the image for the one below that it is from 1900 – we have visited the museum before and know they have many 1800’s quilts.

There was a challenge quilt where each quilter was giving two paint chip colors and it was up to them to get the fabric and construct a quilt with those colors as the main emphasis. You should be able to see the “paint chips” attached to the upper right of each quilt – very creative.

Here are some other random quilts that caught our eye as we walked through the gymnasiums. A kaleidoscope (stack & whack), halloween (my favorite), quiltworx, and applique among others.

Close up of one the kaleidoscope blocks.

We really hope you enjoyed this tour of the Quilts by the Sea show. Now it’s time to research the next quilt show to attend.