My favourite quilts at Harrogate

This first quilt is made by my friend Joan. It was made for her Grandaughter to celebrate family holidays in Southwold. Hence it is called 'The Southwold Quilt'. It is completely hand made, pieced, appliqued and quilted.
I was disappointed that the judges did not recognise the skill that had gone into this quilt. I did manage to persuade Joan to enter and I am really glad she did - the quilt looked stunning Joan!

My other favourite is this traditional tumbling blocks quilt made by Gill Young. I have a love hate relationship with tumbling blocks and I will make one someday probably for my eldest son who loves this design and used it in his graphic design studies.
When I go to quilt shows there are some quilts which just shout out to me and this was one of them.

Here is a close up - as you can see the black diamond is always in the same position but the others seem to be completely random.
This quilt won the award for Scrap Quilt and Judges Merit.

Harrogate Quilt Show

Last Friday I visited the Harrogate Quilt Show which is much smaller and very different from the Festival of Quilts. I just wish that the only two quilt shows that I attend regularly were more than two weeks apart.
I exhibited three quilts in the show - no rosettes this year but I was pleased to see my quilts on display. The quilt above has been on the blog a few months ago but I only got it finished in time for the show. I really like it probably because I love improvisational piecing but I know a lot of quilters just don't get it! All the fabric started as a pale blue and white stripe but I overdyed it in all those bright colours. It is a medallion style quilt - another one of my favourites.

The second quilt was in the cot quilt category and you haven't seen this one before. It started as a sample for my Tuesday classes and then grew from there. The stars are liberated and the whole quilt is quite heavily quilted as a FMQ workshop sample. All the quilts that got rosettes in this category were very traditional this year so obviously mine didn't fit in.

The final quilt was my black and white miniature quilt that you have seen before.

I haven't shown many cat photos recently so I thought I would share this one of Gizmo helping me quilt the striped quilt!

My favourite gallery at Festival of Quilts - DeAnne Hartwell-Jones

As promised here are photos of quilts from my favourite gallery - welsh quilts by DeAnne Hartwell-Jones. As you may know I love Welsh medallion quilts and this lady is a prolific maker of them and the amazing thing is that they are all hand made, mostly by the piecing over papers method.
The other great thing is that she also makes quilts out of the traditional Welsh wool and guess who came home with two big bags of offcuts from the Welsh woollen mills?

Here you can see the papers still in the back of this quilt.

This lovely quilt is made from Welsh wool flannel, lovely colours and great use of striped fabric.

Lots of lovely medallion quilts.

This courthouse steps quilt is also made out of Welsh wool - foundation pieced by hand.

So much inspiration for me to make my own Welsh Quilt - I have three planned in my head already!

Two more quilts from the Festival of Quilts.

This weekend is one of those long holiday weekends here in England and tomorrow is a bank holiday. So in true tradition the weather has been dreadful! We have been away since Friday at a VW festival in Derbyshire and at lunchtime today our marquee decided to fly away due to the gale force winds. About 10 people helped us to try to rescue it and the VW models that we sell and we did eventually get home safely. So now I am having to have a 'lie down' before finishing the bindings on my competition quilts for Harrogate.

I have been amazed by how many people have been reading my FOQ reports so I have decided to share some more of my photos and thoughts.

As you know I am a Dear Jane fan and came across this quilt in the contemporary quilt category. It is called 'Confederate Jane' and was made by Penny Chattey of Stevenage. The pattern is based on the confederate flag.

Here is a detail shot - it looks as if the blocks are painted which seems like a great idea to me as some of them are a real challenge to piece!

This next quilt was one of my husband's favourites due to the subject matter. (We send a lot of our toy cars out mail order). He particularly liked the inclusion of the red rubber bands which are controversial as some posties litter our streets with them.

The quilt is called The Romance of the Envelope made by Charlotte Soares of Richmond.

Still have to share the photos of my favourite gallery from the festival. Wonder if you can guess which one I liked best?
Clue - she lives in Aberaeron, Wales!

Some of my favourite quilts from Festival of Quilts 2010

I would like to share photos of some of my favourite quilts. None of them are winners and most of the winners did not inspire me very much. I am not saying that the judges made a mistake, they were just not my choice.
I will start with a Dear Jane because I always love to see them - this one is called Frugal Jane and was made by Cathy O'Neill from Ireland.

Detail of a hexagon quilt made of triangles of striped fabric. I am interested in the use of striped fabric in quilts and I thought this was a lovely example. Made out of recycled fabric, made by Alison Davies from Nottingham.

A quilt made from recycled shirts - loved the use of different shapes in this one and the hand quilting. Called 'Where have all my shirts gone?' by Rosalind Gregory and Joan Herrington.

And finally Elvis - probably my favourite, just made from squares but so effective. Called Kingsize, made by Gabrielle Collard from London.

Festival of Quilts 2010

Just returned from the Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham. I visited the show for 3 days, Thursday, Friday and today. It is the first time that I have visited for more than one day and I have really enjoyed it. Even so I don't think that I saw every quilt!
The first thing I did on Thursday morning was to visit my pieces in situ just to make sure they had arrived safely and that they looked ok. I was pleased to find them looking great and not out of place, meaning up to standard.
Of course I did not win a prize but entering and seeing my pieces on display has given me confidence to keep entering more shows. I heard some good comments when I was standing near them and someone took a photo of my quilt so that was positive!

Here is my miniature quilt on display, top row 2nd from left. You can see the winning miniature quilt here - it went on to win 'Best in Show'.

And here is my sewing machine cover in the Quilt Creations category.

Here is the winner of the Quilt Creations -a puppet called Dirty Bertie made by Sarah Bailey.

Second place went to this doll - 'Child of the owl clan' by Marie Roper.
I think that this category must be difficult to judge as it contains quite different items, wearable art, bags, shoes, books etc but it is also one of the best categories in my opinion.

So lots more to tell in future posts. Didn't buy much fabric or supplies but have bought a new sewing machine which is about 3 years overdue. Spent lots of time talking to old friends and new. Lovely to see Pat and Paul from Cornwall, Sue from my embroidery group, Sandra from Leeds, Annedore from Germany to mention just a few.

Lovely hexagon quilt from Wales.

I always enjoy looking at hexagon quilts and I have a couple of examples in my collection of antique/vintage quilts. I also have a lot of hexagon fabric pieces of vintage Laura Ashley fabric and an unfinished quilt top made of them!
This is a quilt on display at the moment in the Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre and it is a really interesting example.

As it says below it is made of silk and velvet. I love the use of the black background and the way she has appliqued each 'flower' onto a black velvet hexagon. I think this is a great idea as it separates each flower giving them more impact.

As you can see she has embroidered around each flower - I assume this is to attach it to the black hexagon. The embroidery stitch looks like a fly stitch to me.

Some of the fabrics have disintegrated and the papers are shown underneath. This is the strange bit - I wonder why she left them in when the quilt appears to be finished?

Here is the entire quilt. A fabulous example of a hexagon quilt.