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!