More Quilts by Ingrid Press

The more I have reflected on my visit to the Festival of Quilts the more I have not been able to the work of this lady out of my mind. She was present in her gallery and how I wish I had spent more time talking to her and asking her about her work. All I actually did was comment how much I loved it and asked her permission to take photos.

I have looked her up on google and found very little information although quite a lot of bloggers seem to agree on how impressed they were with her work.

This is what appeared in the Festival of Quilts catalogue

"Ingrid works with cloth (which is often re-cycled) and fibre. She likes to arrange things - mainly in rows and grids. She sees beauty in repetition. Texture is also important and is achieved through dense machine stitching of the quilts and through the materials and weaving methods used when making her small vessels. Making things gives her a feeling of being connected to many generations of crafts people all over the world.She subscribes to 'Less is More' and tries to keep her work calm and rather simplistic, which is helped by the use of a limited colour palette."
And here are the photos I took of some of her work. I love the use of colour, the use of recycled fabrics and the dense machine quilting.

Hope you like them too.........

Festival of Quilts 2009

On Thursday I visited the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. This is the largest quilt show in the UK and has to be visited if you are serious about quilting!!
I am going to share some random photos with you just to give a flavour of the show. This first quilt made me smile - I am a big fan of Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville and those of you who know her will understand why this quilt stood out for me. It is called 'One for the Boys' and is by Pauline Shorter. I loved how she had included cuff links on some of the cuffs.

The next photo was the winner of the category 'Quilt Creations'. It drew a lot of attention at the show, a lovely idea, very original. Made by Gillian Travis.

The next photo needs little introduction - it is one of Phillipa Naylor's quilts - she had a wonderful exhibition at the show.

My favourite exhibition was by Ingrid Press who makes lovely quilts using lots of neutral colours with only small areas of colour and lots of repitition.

Although not announced until after my visit I believe this quilt won Best in Show, made by Pat Holly and Sue Nickels. It was a very beautiful quilt and it was interesting to see that a more traditional quilt won the top prize.

Finally it was good to see the Little Gems Tombola which was raising funds for the Quilters Guild. There were only a few quilts on display but I hope you can get a flavour of the tombola. There were queues so hopefully they have raised lots of money. When I was taking these photos a young couple won a quilt, the lady behind the counter said to them that they had won a 'special' quilt and handed over a brown envelope. The young woman opened the envelope and the excited quilt lady said 'oh look you have won the quilt by Linda Kemshall'. The young woman just looked back unphased and asked who Linda Kemshall was...............!

Well it made me smile!

A Quilt for Elsie.

I did manage to get Elsie's quilt finished and it was delivered yesterday. It is the first rag quilt I have made and I have to say I am pleased with the results. Although it took ages to clip all the exposed seams it frayed to a lovely soft finish. I will certainly be making more quilts like this - I think they would make lovely Linus quilts.

Here is a closer photo - click on it for a larger image.

And here I am with Elsie my new great - neice!

Quilting Under Pressure.

I always seem to leave things until the last minute and here I am again under pressure to get a quilt finished for tomorrow. It is a baby quilt for my new great-neice Elsie who was born in June. Tomorrow I am going to the Festival Of Quilts in Birmingham and in the evening we are going to visit Elsie who lives near Rugby.

After finding a pile of flannel scraps in my stash a few months ago I decided to have a go at a rag quilt. This is one of those quilts with the exposed frayed seams. I don't really like the term rag quilt so I am calling mine a snuggle or cuddle quilt.

I have put together 25 10 inch squares from the scraps and taken a photo of the results. I am quite pleased with the effect. I also really like the fabric - the animals are really great and I am sure that Elsie will enjoy looking at them all when she gets a bit older.


So why am I even writing this when I should be putting this quilt together NOW. Well at just after 11pm last night I ran out of washed flannel for the backing and batting squares so I had to wash some more and it is now on the washing line in the garden. I vastly underestimated how much fabric I needed but luckily I have two large pieces of baby flannel in my stash which I bought very cheaply at the Shuttle in Bradford.

When I get it finished I will take more photos and show you the finished result but it may not be for a couple of days as we are off to Birmingham in the morning.

I had intended to boycott the FOQ this year due to the problems I had with them losing my entry last year but you know the old saying 'don't cut your nose off to spite your face!' I am going because there is lots I want to see - the C&G students work, Ferret's exhibition, long arm quilters, and I think there might be a few traders there........

Birthday Block Swap Completed.

Firstly - apologies for the blog silence. I have the bloggers worst nightmare problem - a broken laptop! Also the 'house' PC that I am currently using is very sick, currently it will only work lying on its side and is making the most awful noise. There are other computers in the house but we all know how much more convenient it is to have your own laptop - and would you want to blog in a teenage boys bedroom?

Quilting wise I have not made as much progress as I was hoping - but isn't that always the way?
However I have completed the Birthday Block Swap I started last July. This is the last block, it should have been the June block but was not actually completed until July. It has gone to Libby who lives in Buffalo NY - her theme was ferns and violets and I decided to do an embroidered block for a change as I had found this lovely design in a quilting mag a few months ago.


This is a close up of the stitching. I have used hand dyed fabrics as my first two borders and then a fern printed fabric for the outer border.

So over the last year I have made blocks for 11 people that have gone all over the world. It has been a good swap as I have tried out new blocks and ideas that I never would have tried otherwise. I have received enough blocks back to make my quilt but am still disappointed that three of the ladies I made a block for have not sent me one yet. Perhaps there is still time?