Edinburgh Spring Quilt Festival - photos

The show is now over and once again I've had a great time up here in Edinburgh.

I am looking forward very much to coming back to Scotland in May. I will be teaching several workshops at Kaleidoscope on the last weekend in May and returning to central Scotland the following weekend for workshops at Purely Patchwork. One of the Kaleidoscope workshops will be "Super Strips" and I will be teaching "Japanese Circles and Squares" at Purely Patchwork. These are my two most popular patchwork workshops at present. I am launching a new sashiko workshop, "Sashiko for Summer", at Purely Patchwork - combining some easy sashiko patterns with different marking techniques and a summery colour scheme, with designs including fans and kamon family crests.

I had several quilting friends helping out at this show. Pearl brought a hessian bag she customised with sashiko panels. So unique!


Fiona's folded Flying Geese in Japanese blue fabrics was displayed on the stand next door to mine. She also brought her sashiko to stitch, and has just finished the panel she started yesterday.


Everyone who helped me out ended up stitching sashiko on my demo stand. Glyn tried sashiko for the first time today. He designed and made two coasters, with this Celtic maze design - both drawn freehand by the way. He has promised to send me a drawing so we can make a kit version of these, as the designs provoked a lot of interest.


One of the interesting aspects of doing shows is the chance to see things made at my workshops or from my books. Marie, who attended a sashiko course at Denman College last year, brought the door hanging she started. I photographed it hanging over my '99 Treasures" quilt.


Ann Hill is running a block of the month programme from "Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks" and she was using her version of the satchel handbag. She has sent me some photos of blocks being made on the course, which I'll post separately. It is always interesting to see how the designs work in different fabrics and colours, and they will make some lovely sampler quilts.

Edinburgh Spring Quilt Festival

I am having a good time at the exhibition at Ingliston. There seemed to be more visitors than ever for the show's first day. After a very busy day yesterday and a full workshop, hopefully this morning I'll have a chance to look at some of the quilts. :-)

One of the guest exhibitions (this show, like some of the other autumn and spring shows, isn't competitive) is 'I feel a Quilt coming on!' by Dilys Fronks. Dilys is going to be Quiltfest's 'fringe' quilter for 2012, taking over the Museum gallery for the second half of February, so there will be a chance to see some of her stunning 'garden gate' quilts and other appliques there. These were amazing the visitors yesterday, especially the skilful and subtle way she uses commercial prints to create illusions of depth within the landscapes, something that has to be seen in real life to be really appreciated (and to work out how she does it!)

Teesside steel update

I was on Teesside last night, on my way up to Edinburgh, but didn't see this story in the news then -

Teesside steel plant's £291m sale secures 700 jobs

How good to hear some positive news on UK jobs and industry for a change!

EDIT - more announced on Friday.

Edinburgh Spring Quilt Festival next weekend

I will be at the Edinburgh Spring Quilt Festival on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, where I will be demoing, teaching a one hour sashiko 'taster' workshop and signing my books. Click on the "download show details" button to see the poster listing the various special quilt exhibits.

"The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook" is reprinting yet again and I have been unable to get hold of any copies for this show - it will be available again in mid March.

I will have copies of my newest books "130 Little Quilt Blocks" and "Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks", along with all my other books (so long as you are there early enough for some of the others :-) - it is becoming more and more difficult to predict which books will sell best at each show!)

I also have a new "limited edition" sashiko cushion kit in red and white - I will be posting a photo soon. It has to be limited edition, because I have only one bolt of the vintage red and white yukata cotton used for the front panel. I am offering it in two versions - at £12 with the plain red backing fabric included and £10 without (for those who already have a spare fat quarter of plain red!)


There is only enough fabric for 24 of these kits (6 with the backing fabric included) so if you want one, contact me asap.

Workshops in Bridlington in April

We have a very small number of places left on these workshops now (and a few places on the sashiko course), as Fiona told me today. So if you were thinking about coming on either the Super Strips or Sashiko Furoshiki day workshops or the residential Sashiko course, please book as soon as possible to avoid disappointment!

Saturday April 9th 2011 - Super Strips

Sunday April 10th 2011 - Sashiko Furoshiki

Monday April 11th - Thursday April 14th 2011 - Discover Sashiko

Day workshops and residential course at The Royal Hotel, Bridlington.

Fiona is also hosting a workshop with Ferret on October 26th, 2011 - "Autumn Leaves".

Quiltfest 2012 - early news!

As many will already know, plans have been afoot to get things organised for Quiltfest 2012. I have taken over running the exhibition from Val Shields, Quiltfest's founder, and am delighted to announce that our main exhibitor at the Pavilion Gallery for 2012 will be - FERRET!

Check out her website here.

More exhibitor news coming soon!

V & A medallion inspired quilt - progress update

Another two borders added and a third made.

The slanted rectangles border is the one where I needed that extra fabric - the triangles on the end of the border strips are slightly larger than those along the sides.

The squares on point border suffered some kind of miscalculation and it ended up exactly half a unit short. The original quilt had a double diamond border at this point, but I wanted to simplify the design and make better use of charm squares (5in squares). The original also had those half square triangles at the ends. I thought I'd worked it out so I wouldn't have those, which might have worked if I'd left the charm squares as the full 5in, but I trimmed them to 4 1/2in so the finished squares are just 4in - I think I mixed up measurements for the diagonals across the squares between the finished and the cut measurements and did the same with the red triangles along the edge. This meant the whole border was slightly narrower than anticipated, so I added a 1in finished dark solid border right round, so the next border - nine patch blocks on point - will still fit. On the plus side, the solid border helps to control the bias edges on those red triangles (when I remake this in Moda's 'Authentic', I'll cut them so they are on the straight grain).

D & C Quilters' Diary for 2012

I don't often have ads anywhere, so this is a quick snapshot with some text for the 2012 Quilter's Diary David & Charles are publishing. A few of my quilts were in the 2011 diary (including the sashiko sampler from 'The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook' and quilts from the Inspiration Gallery in "Japanese Sashiko Inspirations). One of the quilts from 'Japanese Quilt Inspirations' will be on the cover of the 2012 diary. The 2011 diary (cover below) is becoming harder to track down, but some shops may still have it - I got an extra copy from Sew Good Books at the Exeter craft show last month.


Each week to view spread has a high quality quilt illustration opposite, so there are inspirations and ideas throughout the year.

I will have the 2012 diary for sale by the summer.

Quiltfest at the Museum, Llangollen

The quilts displayed in the Museum gallery at Quiltfest are two guest exhibitions by Turning Point. You may know their work as individual quilters from Quiltfest in previous years (of course, the work on show this year is new to Llangollen), from their solo work elsewhere or their group exhibitions at Festival of Quilts.

The gallery is an interesting space, as it is open to ground floor of the museum below, which is packed with interesting resources and exhibits about Llangollen's history. The following photos will give you an overall impression of the gallery. Our demonstrator yesterday afternoon was Maureen Poole, of Wrexham Quilting Circle, English paper piecing Debbie's Fibonacci block.


On entering the gallery, the first exhibition is "Trees in the Park". This is what the group wrote about these quilts on their website - click here to see their website gallery of these works (not all of them could be sent for Quiltfest).

"The Celtic Wisdom of Trees" by Jane Gifford is the inspiration for our collection of hangings. It is a beautiful book full of stunning photographs looking at the beliefs of an ancient people. But this is not some faraway lost civilisation, these are our ancestors and their voices can, almost, still be heard and, if we open our eyes, the trees are still right here. There was great excitement as we studied the Celtic Tree Calendar to see which tree we were born under. Some people were happy to work with their birth tree while others had various reasons for choosing an other tree. Once chosen we found that our trees had all sorts of meanings and properties completely unknown to our media numbed senses. The process of study and then creation has been one of the most satisfying our group has undertaken. I hope you enjoy the results.

A selection of the quilts on show at Llangollen (captions for individual quilts are above the quilt) -



Pat Archibald's quilt is on the left below.


I can't find a label for these two - 'Silver Birch' by Mary Ennis (left) and 'Rowan' by Liz Ferguson.


'Rowan' was my favourite out of the set, although it was hard to choose a favourite. Here are a few detail photos -


I liked the effect of the subtly overlapped circles (above) and the translucency of the foliage (below).





The second exhibition is "Carved in Cloth" - click link for website gallery.

We decided to make a piece based on one of the exhibits in the Museum's vast collection (Smith Museum and Art Gallery in Stirling, not Llangollen!), but what to choose? We were attracted to the Cowane Chest because of its history and the wealth of carving covering every surface much the way we cover the surface of our quilts with stitch. A neutral colour scheme was chosen which we hoped would compliment the dramatic red walls of the exhibition gallery. As ever we have each interpreted the Cowane Chest in our own style and hope we have done justice to this little piece of Stirling's history.

Several quilts and captions follow, as before.




Detail -






Like the exhibition at Y Caban, the Museum exhibition continues until the end of the month. On Wednesdays, the museum is only open in the afternoon.

Sashiko and golf

You are probably wondering what on earth the two have in common! Apart from the fact that several quilters I know are also into golf - a sport which I know very little about - Tim at The Royal Hotel Bridlington, where we are running residential a sashiko course and workshop in April, has just had his golf specials website redone. Your golfing partner can enjoy the same accommodation, but play golf while you stitch! Check out The Royal's what's on page or contact Fiona at the Royal Hotel for information about my workshops - I think there are still a few places left for the residential sashiko course but the others may already be fully booked.

Identifying a Moda fabric

If I'd known I'd be hunting for more of the light tan floral tone on tone on the left in the attached photo, I'd have looked at Trading Day on Sunday! Messed up my end triangle calculations on all four borders and it is just my luck there's no fabric left. Thought I'd been clever using up a couple of scrap strips that came in a Moda scrap bag (one of those factory packed ones from the Layer Cake production scraps) but now there's no more left and I don't know which range its from. I really don't want to have to remake the strips for want of four triangles but it would be nice if I could get a match. Any ideas?

It was a very recent scrap bag, as the other fabrics in it were from the 'Hope' collection which is just out.

EDIT - Found name and range - it was, as I suspected by designers Kansas Troubles, and is no. 9295 21 from their 'Wrapped in Paisley' collection for Moda. Several friends online suggested I look through the Moda online archive. If you need to search, try loading several pages at once, using the 'View Swatch Page' buttons under each collection name. Knowing the styles of various designers/ranges in advance helps. Of course, the one I was looking for just would start with a 'W' in an alphabetical list!

ANOTHER EDIT - Dot Sherlock at Quilter's Needs (our local travelling quilt shop) came up with just enough for me to cut the larger triangles. Thanks Dot! If she had a web site for her fabrics, I'd add a link, but alas no. You can catch up with her and her fabrics at various quilting events in this region, including Chester Ps & Qs and Wrexham Quilting Circle's monthly meetings, as well as Quilters' Guild events and, of course, Gresford Craft Group's annual exhibition in June.

World Textile Day

Now Quiltfest's trading day is out of the way, the next big trading outing for Susan Briscoe Designs is World Textile Day. As I will be in Australia for most of March, Debbie will be presenting a selection of my Japanese fabrics, kimono, books and kits at Llanidloes this year. It is a great event for lovers of all kinds of world textiles - not just an event for quilters and embroiderers! Right click the image above to download the poster. Please feel free to print and display.

Fabrics - there are quite a lot of new kimono silks, including shibori and other hand dyes, for just £10 a metre.

Kimono - the kimono sale continues - 25% off. This brings the wool hitoe (unlined) kimono to around £21 and the vintage pieces from around £16 up. Some of these are good enough for regular wear, others are a great source of vintage fabric for repurposing and remaking.

As part of the 'Print, Pattern and Design' exhibition this year, we will be showing some kimono, obi and sample panels/fabrics (these panels and fabrics will be for sale).

You can see pictures from last year's World Textile Day here.

Painting exhibition in Luxembourg

Missed this unfortunately ;-o

Jean-Marc Lantz's paintings at the Gallery Maggy Stein (blogpost by Nadine Kay)

We had an exhibition of paintings in Luxembourg city in 1990 with Shaun Adamson, another Aberystwyth Visual Art graduate. Funnily enough, I posted a photo of one of the pieces I showed only a week or so ago, as I now use it in my talk, 'From Paint to Stitch'. JM has the two Jacques Brel paintings I showed and I have a couple of his 'leaf trees' watercolours. I have photos somewhere, but it was in pre-digital days.




JM's current work almost looks like fabric (details from the gallery views in the blog link).

Quiltfest miniatures - Sandra Goldsbrough visit

Sandra Goldsbrough, creator of the exquisite seaside miniature quilts on display at Y Caban, will be visiting the gallery on Thursday morning (February 17th), as mentioned on the Quiltfest blog.

You can see some of her award winning miniatures on my earlier blog post about the exhibition at Y Caban.

As far as I'm aware, this will be her only visit to Quiltfest, so if you would like to meet the maker of these tiny masterpieces, make sure the date is in your diary.

A purple and red quilt of mine

After mentioning the purple and red colour combination in the comments to my previous post, here is a purple and red wallhanging that I think April will like. I call it my 'Recycled Curves' and it is a quick project I do as a day workshop (you can find it on my workshop page). The purple and red colour combination came about via a Wrexham Quilting Circle challenge a few years ago, where each of us had to pick two colours out of a hat and make a quilt using those colours. The idea was to try to get people out of their colour comfort zone. I remember one of the other quilters saying purple and red would be difficult to work with, but I knew I'd love the challenge.

The red is only in the raw edge applique layers, the big stitch quilting and the binding (which I seem to have cropped off in this photo), while the purple fabrics in this version are all Bali Batiks.

Sashiko in purple

Julie Green sent me the following photos showing some of her sashiko. She wrote:

I have your Ultimate Sashiko book and used the practice squares I made to make a bag. I know purple isn't authentic but it's my favourite colour...

I also made this jacket, I hand stitched the fish design and then machine quilted with variegated thread using sashiko patterns and appliquéd the chrysanthemum motif on the back, the kanji character says chrysanthemum, at least I hope it does! ;-)


It does - here's a detail from the jacket photo with the kanji written next to it -

The purple fabric was from a remnants market stall in Southall, I paid about £2 per m! I think it's linen but have no idea, I bought it because I wanted something cheap to practice on and it had a fairly course weave :-)

I'm in the planing stages of a casual kimono that I am going to decorate with some of the designs from your taupe book, although I probably won't use taupe. If I ever finish it I'll send you some pics.

I also love the effect of sashiko on purple and Julie's fabric looks like it was a great find. Purple is not the easiest colour to get in fabric suitable for sashiko (none of the Olympus sashiko fabrics are in purple) but I sometimes manage to get hold of traditional narrow width bolts in a lovely rich purple. I just wish it was easier to find! Purple is seen quite a lot in kimono too (it was especially popular in the 1920s and 30s, to judge by the number of 'meisen' silk ikat kimono with purple as the main colour) so I often wonder why it isn't easy to find suitable sashiko fabrics in that colour.

I'll look forward to see some of the taupe projects possibly done in a purple palette too?

Contacting me....

It is usually very nice to hear from my books' readers, especially when they send me photos of the lovely work they've done from my book. However, I occasionally get very puzzling mail. Had one today - a reader who says she was inspired by "Japanese Sashiko Inspirations" and would like to buy the kits "of which you speak". She said she had contacted Euro Japan Links, who had referred her to me. I'm confused - the only kits which get mentioned in the book at all, because they were shown as ideas for reader's own work in the 'Inspiration Gallery' were listed on the suppliers page and they were Euro Japan kits. I did note "check for availability". The book was published in 2008, so not all of the kits are still available, although over half of them are. The letter seemed to suggest that there might be kits of everything in the book - sorry, there aren't! It would be a very big undertaking to do that.

The two quilt designs shown in the Inspiration Gallery are '99 Treasures' and 'Time and Again' - I sell these myself (on the patterns page at www.susanbriscoe.co.uk), along with the 'Shimacho' cushion which is also featured.

Unfortunately this reader says she doesn't have internet access and also didn't give me her phone number, so the only way to contact her is to write. She didn't include an SAE though...

Maybe if a friend mentions this subject, you could pass on the above information?

:-o

Quiltfest - the future

Today at the annual trading day, exhibition founder Val Shields announced her retirement from Quiltfest. As with Gresford Craft Group, Val worked closely with Susan Hill to organise Quiltfest every year since 2001. Susan is also stepping down from the day to day running of the festival. They are toasting their 'retirement' in the photo above, after Val was presented with a bouquet (below, with Quiltfest's webmaster, Sue Horder).


Quiltfest has shown quilts in an art gallery setting from the first exhibition, specialising in quilts as art. I have offered to take over from Val to run the show for the forseeable future and will be continuing with this focus on art quilts, in the Quiltfest tradition of showing work by both local quilters and invited quilt and textile artists and groups from further afield. Watch this space (and the Quiltfest website, which Sue will continue to run - with new photo galleries coming soon!) for more developments.

Ferret (centre left below) will be one of our featured quilters for next year and I'm hoping Magie Relph (centre right, of the African Fabric Shop) will also be showing her work. Lots to arrange and plan before 2012!