My Mom, Aunt and I went to the New England Quilt Museum last Saturday to see the Caryl Bryer Fallert Exhibit. The ride was beautiful as the trees have moved into high gear for their fall change of color. There was lots of expectant conversation surrounding both the Exhibit and the Mass Shop Hop next weekend.

I’ve admired Caryl Bryer Fallert for a long time. I discovered one of her patterns in a book that was comprised of multiple designers. Although the instructions were a little hard to follow, I not only figured out the pattern but went on to teach it as a class a few times. The classes bought an individual pattern on her website but it was made to a different larger dimensions. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her quilts live and in person, especially a perspective from her first quilt to her latest.

When we walked up the stairs to the exhibit, the initial color impact was breath taking. Corona II, a favorite of mine, was directly across from the stairs and on the left wall was Birds of a Different Color, I couldn’t decide which one to drool over first. There was a bench across from Birds of a Different Color so I just sat and took them both in.

What a great show, there were quilts that seemed like old friends I had admired so often in books, but to see them in person was a whole new perspective. Ms. Fallert’s quilting designs that travel out into the borders, the multitude of thread colors used in a single quilt, the hand dyed fabrics all brought such uniqueness to her quilts.

It was all so inspiring – her unique piecing method, the hand dyes got me to consider additional options for my dyeing techniques, and the quilting – there’s so much to consider there:

• Although I often use multiple threads in one quilt, she stuck to solids (where I tend to use verrigateds) so she would have 10 times more thread changes than I might have previously considered
• She let the designs, like a quilted feather, carry out into and run off of the border
• Created ghost images (I have quilted an edge to edge twice but that’s not even close)
• Feathers that resemble realistic feathers

I could go on and on, I took lots of pictures (no flash is a requirement) which they advised were OK to post to a blog – so I’m sharing a few. Hopefully you can make it to the show, to see her first quilt with all the others makes it all feel possible.