Canada? Really.
Do give serious consideration to attending a Canadian quilt show. I just got back from Quilt Canada 2014 where I was amazed at the quality and variety of quilts shown at that juried show. And the organizers (the Canadian Quilters’ Association) included other shows at the same location so you could take in art quilts (Fibre Arts Network), modern quilts, feed sack quilts, and a local guild show as well. Oh, I forgot the exhibit of quilts made by the show’s judges, organizers, workshop teachers, and lecturers.
I can’t show you photos from the juried show as photography wasn’t allowed. I did find a site that lists show winners with photos. Even with the closeups you can’t really get a sense of the attention to detail in the quilts. However, I’ll be showing quilts from some of the other shows in upcoming posts. Here’s a photo of the garden at the B & B we stayed at. The rest of the garden covered over an acre.
The icing on the cake was a last minute trip to a local government office building to view a specially commissioned set of art quilts that highlight the natural wonders of the Niagara region. My friend and I would never have known about it if Nina Stahlschmidt, a feed sack quilt expert we chanced upon, hadn’t clued us in.
I’m both energized and humbled by all the work I saw.
The Snarky Quilter 
The quilts look amazing–but I wish they would’ve let people take photos so we could see details from you. I’ve never heard of no photos at a quilt show before . . .
If you’ve been to the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati, you’ll find that some exhibits, like SAQA’s, forbid photography. Same thing at Quilt National. In defense of show organizers, often you can buy a print catalog or a DVD of the show entries. And pix of all the Quilt Canada entries are to be posted on the CQA website sometime. However, none of these help with capturing the fine details that catch one’s eye. Sure, some of the official photos show detail, but the detail I’m interested in may be something else. For example, I’ve been struggling with creating clouds on one piece, and at the show was a quilt that used white netting with some sort of white fiber-y stuff tucked underneath to portray really great clouds. My friend swore the fiber-y stuff was cat hair, but who knows.