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.
Galley view of Hillary Goodwin’s exhibit
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:
Sunny side Up; Mariana Schwartz, Susan Manson, Julia McLeod, Christine Reiter, Claudia Schearer, Catherine Sparacino, Barb Strick, Michelle Trimble, Lorraine Woodruff-Long
La Vie En Rose; Mariko Dunewald
Eiffel Tower; Barbara Strick
Inset Starburst; Hillary Goodwin
Pick Up Sticks, Hillary Goodwin
!!!, Hillary Goodwin
I Made It All About Me; Juliana van Tellingen
Elements of an Orbit; Catherine Sparacino
The Avenue of Trees; Kathy McGuffin, quilted by Angi Merlone
Spinning Wheel Ruler work; Edwina Ow
Round Robin 2022; Sumilu Cue, quilted by Sue Fox
Forest Light; Claudia John Shearer
Log Cabin Medley; Fern Royce
Levi’s Radiography Improv; quilted by Rachel Dorr
Molly’s Windows, Hillary Goodwin
Row Robin Friendship Quilt; Dorothy Taylor
Midnight Migration – A Memory Quilt…; Sue Fox
Still Life #1; Barbara Strick
Baptist Fan Redux, Hillary Goodwin
Improv Mosaic Jacket; Lorraine Woodruff-Long
Opportunity Quilt, Leaf; Assembled by Gail Angiulo, Jill Reed, Donna Noble, Candace Creasy, Eve Lynch and Sue Fox; quilted by Sue Fox
PLAiD:432(ONE); Catherine C. Sherman
Garden With Challenging Flowers; Juliana van Tellingen
Paper Pieced Plaid (Plaid No. 4); Holly Gatto
33%; Carrie L. Johnson
Kimono Sleeve Nomore; Jeanie Low
Colleen is parade-ready in New Orleans; Dottie McHugh
In Memoriam, Jeanne Matysiak
The Black One; Sara Guyol, quilted by Judy Irish
“Yun Yun – Everybody”; Letitia Chung
Ken Keeps Memorial GRAY–“Collections”; Sue Fox
Blue Birds of Happiness; Becky Simpson
Kaffe Fassett Window Pane Jacket; Betty Tang-Fitzpatrick
In Memoriam, Carolyn Bower
Opportunity Quilt, Diamonds; Sue Halman & Sue Fox; quilted by Sue Fox
Dancing with Diggerence; Errol Feria
Exploding Galaxy; Kerstin Jost
Red Star; Mariana Schwartz; quilted by Nancy Williams
Circles on the Square; Dorothy Taylor, quilted by Dorothy Taylor and Judith Epstein
Twisted Ribbon; Cathey Kennedy, Dorcas Hand Quilters
The Costermongers Costume; Valerie Lynne
Along Cultural Lines aka Worlds of Wonder; Judith Epstein-Williams
Ellen’s Quilt; Laureen Neilly
Folded Star; Holly Gatto, quilted by Sue Fox
Retro Haight; Dana Miller
Log Cabin Nostalgia; Mariko Duenward
Mad Ombre; Bea Byrne
At the Beach; Maren Larsen
Bear’s Paw; Maren Larsen
Patriotic Star; Maren Larsen
Field of the Cloth of Gold; Lorraine Woodruff-Long
Boboboro; Letitia Chung
Under the Oak Tree; Michelle Wyman
Dunroamin’; Jason Horsey
Sampler; Sara Guyol, quilted by Judy Irish
Happy; Judy Irish
Anything, Anywhere; Julie Scribner
MOdern Blooms & Petals; Judith Epstein-Williams
Dusk; Marie-Claude Le Gall, quilted by New Pieces
Road to Akie’s; Letitia Chung
Autumn Haiku; Letitia Chung
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?