"Letter Carriers" by Janet Stone won First Place - Mixed Technique at Houston International Quilt Festival 2013.

Always a fan of basket blocks, Janet wanted to incorporate some into a quilt. Coming up with the title Letter Carriers before she even made the quilt, she had the idea of making bias strips and actually weaving them to look like baskets. Trying one and finding out it was not as difficult to execute as she thought, she proceeded with the project and Letter Carriers came to be. A play on words, like many of Janet's quilt titles, the baskets she made ended up holding "actual" letters, i.e. A,B,C, etc., so the quilt features literal letter carriers.

(Main Quilt Photo by Gregory Case; Detail Photos from cactus-needle.blogspot.com)