The Denman Kannon 'on tour' - Sakata, Japan

Photos from the exhibition Reiko Domon organised recently - I'm not sure if this was the exhibition at Sakata Manchinka or the one in Akita City (may have misunderstood her e mail), but they will be having another sashiko exhibition in Yamagata City in May next year. As you can see, the Denman Kannon is still in Japan!

The American Museum at Bath

Unusually, Crafts for All ran from Thursday to Saturday and closed Saturday afternoon, so Debbie and I were in the unusual situation of having a Sunday off straight after a show! This meant we could fit in a trip to the American Museum at Bath, something we have wanted to do for a while. It is closed on Mondays, so previously a visit had been impossible. Of course, one of the main reasons we wanted to go there was to see some of the famous collection of antique American quilts, but the museum turned out to be a great source of other inspiration, especially some of the native American items.

I am always a sucker for a dressing up box, so here I am emigrating to America in the C17th, trying to stay upright on deck! The first photo shows me inspecting our supplies...


As these photos are me in pre-photography days, I've 'watercolourised' them. And this is how the West was conquered - by quilters obviously.


These paintings were curiously reminiscent of Ainu embroidery designs (Google Image search 'Ainu clothing' for more pics). Sorry the images are slightly blurred. No flash photography is allowed and I was suffering a bit from camera shake.


Treasures of native American basketry. The patterns in these were stunning.


Moccasins -

Silver and turqouise -


The museum includes a number of room settings from different periods of American history, beginning with a home c.1680. This was interesting for me as I once lived in a Welsh farmhouse built c.1690, and the original house interior would have been very similar to this.


Of course, I loved the miniature version of the house -


...even if it was a bit tricky to photograph on the macro setting.


The murky interior of a Colonial tavern (alas, it was dry) reminded me very much of The George in Speldhurst!


While the quilt display was well worth seeing, including a stunning large Baltimore Beauty quilt, the other quilts were displayed on vertically hung hinged panels, and covered with a (UV resistant?) plastic sheeting. This made photography very difficult. Anyway, if you want to see images of the quilt collection, I recommend their excellent book, 'Classic Quilts from the American Museum in Britain'.

The museum has many little snippets and facts to inspire. I didn't know that the Shaker communities wove these beautiful braids (presumably, too fancy for their own use?)


Pennsylvania 'Dutch' ('Deutch' i.e. 'German') painted furniture often reminds me of the 'roses and castles' painting seen on British canal ware. The painted dresser seems to imitate the colours of Biedermeier style.


The tiny floral bands on this chest carcass were interesting -


The restaurant was good (veggie mushroom quiche for lunch, even though were were a bit late at 2.30) and there are a couple of gift shops - although, as usual, they don't have postcards of the things you want! The bookshop did pretty well on quilting books though, including a few of mine.

Crafts for All, Bristol

As well as the quilts on my demo stand here, the show organisers asked me to bring some quilts for a small display, part of a much larger display of quilts by various local quilt groups and quilt tutors. As it is unusual for some of these quilts to be out and about at all, I took the following photos.


Several that don't get shown much include a small sampler made for 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match', using remakes of two kimono blocks.


The patttern for the small appliqued wallhanging 'Tea Things' appeared in Popular Patchwork about eight years ago. I may republish it.


The grey taupe lap quilt was made for 'Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks', as an excuse for including the sizes for setting triangles for using the blocks on point.


'Takarazukushi' (Collection of Treasures) uses applique blocks from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks'. Like the previous quilt, I intended to quilt it much more heavily (by hand), but there hasn't been time to revisit it and complete the quilting. I must do that sometime, as it is starting to develop creases in the lilac background, which would be helped by more quilting. The plan for this was for a clamshell type pattern like seigaiha (ocean wave) on the lilac faux edo komon print and shippou (seven treasures), in big stitch, over the border squares, plus extra quilting in the background for the applique motifs.


I am running a 'make and take' on the stand, where we are stitching hitomezashi kikkou, a woven stitch.


Sunday update - we had lots of people trying the make and take today, including this enthusiastic 7 year old stitcher. He did really well too!

Great Northern Quilt Show - Best in Show

Just a quick post, as I am getting ready to drive to Bristol for Crafts For All, which starts tomorrow. This is partly for Ferret, who has blogged about this gorgeous sampler quilt - 'Overleaf' by Susie Corke. Like Ferret, I was also wowed by the quilt at Sandown Park and have pretty much the same opinion of it! Read Ferret's blog post for more info.


The photos with the blue winning ribbons are from the Great Northern Quilt Show and those with the purple ribbons are from the National Quilt Championships at Sandown Park. I am a bit annoyed with myself that the Harrogate photos aren't quite as sharply focussed as I would like to really show off the hand quilting, which was beautiful.


I can't find Susie's website, if she has one, so if anyone knows of a site or blog, please let me know and I'll add the link. I read somewhere that she teaches, so you may be interested in workshops.

Great Northern Quilt Show - more quilts!

Here are a few photos of some of the other quilts in the show. For copyright reasons, I can't go showing photos of everything, so I'm sticking to photos of quilts by quilters I know and quilters I hope won't mind me drooling over their work! The table runner above was started at one of my sashiko furoshiki workshops (sorry, I am having a complete block as to which one, and will need to be reminded).

If you look closely at the photos in the following link, you can see Michele Boyd's blocks at the Chester Ps & Qs Log Cabin workshop back in April 2010. Lovely to see the finished quilt in the Bed Quilts section. There is a lot of work in this - it's quite a bit bigger than my original version too.


Always nice to see another version of '99 Treasures'. Jacky Hooton machine quilted this one. Because the quilting design supplied with the pattern is a continuous line design - a hybrid between shippo (seven treasures) and fundo (balance weights), it is ideal for machine quilting as well as hand quilting.


The theme category this year was 'Down by the Sea' and there were some lovely pieces and a good diversity of theme interpretation. Sandra Wyman's quilt, 'Digging for Bait', had already caught our attention at Festival of Quilts, so I was really pleased to have another chance to see it. At Festival of Quilts, I didn't have my show guide to hand when I was looking at the Contemporary quilt section, and I didn't realise it was one of Sandra's quilts. She was kind enough to send me a copy of the photo mentioned on the label.


Sheena Norquay's fantastic four panel wall hanging won first in the theme section.


... and rounded up quite a few more awards along the way, winning the Machine Quilting award and coming Overall Runner Up in the show. It did not surprise me that Sally Holman bagged this quilt for her Judge's Choice either, as the sea is a constant inspiration in her work as well.


It is easy to see why. I am a big fan of Sheena's quilting and I own one of her small wallhangings (a piece made for the Quilters' Guild's £50 fundraiser about 6 years ago).