The San Francisco Quilters Guild Show – 2025
It’s high season for spring quilt shows! I attended the San Francisco Quilters Guild Show last weekend and what an amazing show it was. I got see the 2023 show with Joe Cunningham as the Guest Artist and I remembered the fabulous venue and great quilts, so I was keen to see this year’s show. The guild itself is 250+ strong.
The SFQG show was held at the Event Center of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The Cathedral and grounds takes up an entire block in one of the most lovely areas of the city. This is the best venue I have seen for a quilt show, with huge, wide halls in which the Guest and Member Artist exhibits were beautifully displayed. It felt like an art gallery. The show itself was housed in 3 large, well lighted rooms in a configuration that allowed visitors to easily view the quilts. It is the Cadillac of quilt show venues.
The Guest Artist was Hillary Goodwin. I have long admired her quilts as well as her wearables. She is an ER physician in my area and yet creates these amazing quilts and garments. The Member Artist was Maren Larsen, a long time guild member and maker of divine traditional quilts. It was refreshing to see her beautiful interpretations of traditional designs, all quilted on her domestic machine. What a fabulous line up – Modern quilts and wearables and traditional quilts!
The show itself was remarkable in a few specific ways:
- Almost all of the quilts were quilted by members. This is very unusual.
- A large number of those self-quilted quilts were done on a domestic machine, or hand quilted.
- There were a lot of hand dyed, surface designed and luxe fabrics used in the quilts.
- The quilting on the Modern quilts was especially creative.
- The quality of the quilts and quilting was very high.
- Even though there was a definite slant towards Modern/art/creative quilts, the more Traditional quilts were standing proud in their own right, with exquisite design, color choices, precision and quilting.
- The wearables display was huge and very creative. It is GOOD to see wearables thriving!
Before we get to the quilts, just know I had a reeeeealy hard time narrowing down what to show! So many of these quilts deserve a narrative and close-up shots. But with 63 photos to color adjust, crop and add titles to, I just could not do it. Please enjoy these amazing quilts:
I love to attend quilt shows. Can you tell? I love all quilt shows, small or large. I hope you enjoyed this show!
I’ll be linking up:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
Wow! Whoa! Wowzers! Holy Moly! Unbelievable! Ingenious! X10! Thank you Jenny for sharing. I’m looking up next year’s show dates and putting it on my calendar! You’re right….it’s definitely over-the-top spectacular and definitely Fantabulistic! Sure did spurn a ton of ideas in my head….just lock me in The Playroom and throw me food now and then. If you ever want a copilot to go, let me know.
I’m truly lol right now! It is biannual so you’ll have to wait until 2027. It was amazing. Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for your beautiful pictures and detailed descriptions. I look forward to your reviews as I’m unable to go to shows that aren’t local.
And I enjoy your weekly updates on what you are creating.
Thank you Sonja! I’m happy to do the hard work for you:-), lol!
Thank you so much for sharing. I love the effect of the folded star.
Looks like a great venue.
I spend time with my grands most weekends so I miss a lot of shows!
Though the whole family is helping with setup and take down for our show this weekend. GQCCC .
I am starting to practice my machine quilting finally! Thanks to your class and books.
Oh I am thrilled to hear that you are free motion quilting Kathy! Keep going! Glad you enjoyed the show. It’s hard to get to them all!
Thanks so much for this show. I miss shows like this. The quilts were so well done.
Glad I could show it to you Bev!
What a fantastic show! I have never seen that much variety and originality in a local guild show, and I think it’s wonderful that so many of their members are following through and doing their own quilting. Not that there’s anything wrong with hiring a long arm quilter; I just worry sometimes that the ubiquity of professional quilting in quilt shows may be discouraging an entire generation from ever attempting to learn to quilt at all, whether by hand or by machine. And I’m glad that there are teachers like you out there encouraging people to just give quilting a try, because — as I’m sure you know — sometimes the people who are the most intimidated by the quilting process end up having the MOST fun once they try it, and discover they possess gifts and talents in quilting they were totally unaware of!
Yes, I was so impressed with their self-quilting, like it was a part of the culture of the guild. Nothing wrong with a long armer, right?