Friday 12 August 2011

Wonky Houses at Festival of Quilts

Tonight I have arrived home happy, but tired from two days at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. The show must be the highlight for British Quilters and this year has been as enjoyable as ever.
The best things about it are - meeting up with old friends and making new ones, seeing some of the best quilts in Europe, great shopping opportunities and the feeling of being part of something special.
I really didn't want to come home when I was 'kicked out' at 5.30pm today but I have come away with lots of inspiration for future projects.
The quilts were of a really high standard as ever. My observations were - less entries from 'big names', not always agreeing with the judging, less entries from outside Europe and lots of quilts which were entered in the wrong category (makers have to decide whether their quilts are art quilts, contemporary or traditional)
As always I have taken lots of photos, over 300 actually and I will try to share some of these over the next few days.

We will start with a quilt that I came upon by accident - I didn't see it in the catalogue.
One of my current areas of interest is liberated piecing and this quilt is a masterpiece of liberated wonky houses. It has been made by 178 quilters from the Czech Republic and is 6 metres wide by 2 metres tall. It has been awarded a Guiness World Record although it was not clear what this was given for.
























Lots of liberated, improvised piecing, each house individual and interesting to look at. It was a highlight of the show for me!
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3 comments:

Tonya Ricucci said...

really really cute quilt. are you sure it was liberated? they all look so similar to me, more like they were paper-pieced. or else they were all taught to make them in a very similar manner. that quilt is huge - would have taken a loooot of work even with that many quilters. It's interesting to hear that ya'all have 3 categories. How are they defining "contemporary?" Would that be quilts done to pattern like in the Modern Quilt Workshop (Ringle and Kerr)?

Di said...

I absolutely loved this quilt too and was delighted to be there as one of the contributors was showing her block.

Quilthaze said...

Ths show was fabulous! I loved this quilt and so amny others too. I'll try to post some of my photos later on my blog.