Quilts UK at Malvern etc.

Quilts UK was in the middle of this month and, as usual, it was a lovely show.  Although the weather forecast was for rain every day, we were pretty lucky and it even got rather warm down in the marquee.  My stand was in the usual spot, at the bottom of the ramp. Here's one of our visitors with one of the backpacks from '21 Sensational Patchwork Bags' made using Sweetwater's 'Pure' collection, in tranquil blues, creams and browns.

 

This lovely version of my 'Super Strips' quilt was started at one of my workshops. The shaded blues look wonderful and I hope I'll see a photo of it quilted.

 

This year I was teaching a one hour sashiko workshop every day (Sashiko in Circles) which was in great demand and sold out quickly.  I then had to push through the crowds in the main hall every lunchtime to get to the spacious and quiet new workshop area upstairs, but it was worth it!  I'll be teaching the same workshop at the Great Northern Quilt Show at Harrogate later this year.

Next year, I won't be at Malvern as I am planning to do the Loch Lomond Quilt show instead, but I'll be back in 2015.

There were a few quilts made from my patterns in the show.  This version of 'Sakiori' from 'Japanese Quilt Inspirations' is in luscious red berry shades. It is called 'In the Pink' and was made by Pamela Bradley.  The light squares in the centre of the square-in-a-square 'masu' blocks give lovely little highlights, while the overall low colour and tone constrasts make it look very different from the original.

The treatment of the circle appliques was very attractive.  Each one has a different embroidered landscape, stitched on silk.  Aren't they gorgeous?

Joan McAllister's 'Japanese Quilt' uses blocks from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' with a border quilting design in the black border inspired by Kumiko Sudo's designs. I'm sure Joan showed me this quilt top at Malvern a year or two ago, when she was looking for border and backing fabrics.  The golden brown colour scheme is so effective.  The quilt in the background is 'Piilani' by Pippa Moss, which won the Hand Applique award - you can see a better photo of it here on her blog.  It looks rather red in my photo, but the colour is more of a marroon.

My Judge's Choice award went to Joanne Colwill's 'Reds in the Bed'.  This quilt caught my eye right at the start of the judging, when I like to look around all the quilts before I even start marking (a good idea to get an overall impression of the standard at the show). It is a very attractive scrap quilt - Joanne must have a lot of red and neutral scraps for it to be so coordinated!  Little details like the stripe used for the narrow border and the bias binding, and the very pale main border, give it a very faded elegance. It was longarm quilted by Sandy Chandler at the Quilting Company in stunning designs which look wonderful in real life - I'm not sure I could capture it very well in the photos.  There's a simple criteria for Judge's Choice - you just pick the quilt you'd most like to take home.  While that can be a difficult choice to make when there are so many lovely works entered, I find I often return to the one that captured me first, so long as another quilt judge hasn't beaten me to it.

There were some excellent invited exhibitions this year (i.e. not competitive quilts) and we especially enjoyed having the treat of quilts by Sally Bramald (Feather on a Wire blog) and Gwenfai Rees Griffiths in consecutive aisles.  Some of the best machine quilting and hand quilting shown together - amazing.  Sally's quilts will also be shown at the National Quilt Championships at Sandown Park next month, but I think Gwenfai's have now finished touring.

As we needed to pick up some furniture we'd bought on eBay while we were at the show, for the first time we had a van rather than bringing the car.  It made packing up a lot easier, even if it looks like there is way more stuff than usual!

A couple of days after the show, we met my friend Reiko Domon and her daughter in Chester, where they were for just a few hours as part of their holiday tour of English gardens and cities.  It was lovely to see Reiko again.  She gave us some beautiful wedding presents, including an antique dish with a hand painted mountain scene.  I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes with the hand dyed threads and fabrics I gave her - the same threads we used in the sashiko workshops at Malvern.  We photographed a lot of patchwork and design inspirations around Chester too.  As their trip ended with a day at the Chelsea Flower Show, I expect Reiko will be making a very colourful quilt next!.

We also went to Stockton for a family party for our wedding reception.  Glyn made this little fish plaque, only a few inches long, which was thrown into the Tees from the Infinity Bridge to mark our wedding last December.  It has our names, the date and place on it.  The 'wedding rings' attached to its tail are two brass plumbing olives, polished up.

Antique quilt inspirations and two forthcoming exhibitions

Antique quilts have such wonderful designs and two forthcoming exhibitions will no doubt provide more inspitations.  At York, the Quilt Museum opens their new exhibition, 'The Blossoming of Patchwork', on May 18th.  With its focus on early printed fabrics, this promises to be very interesting and it will include some well-known quilts and coverlets from the collections.

One of the quilt images being used to promote the exhitbion online is the Mrs Billings coverlet which appears as a tiny thumbnail on the exhibitions page - here's a link to the larger image in the Heritage Collection online.  I'm looking forward to seeing this intricate early patchwork.  Australian quilter Karen Styles has drafted templates for a version of this patchwork, shown here on her website.  It's got a few changes from the original, but they are hard to spot and the effect is really lovely.  I wonder if there will be some more quilts inspired by this complex patchwork coverlet after the exhibition.

The patchwork in the photo at the top is my version of a checkerboard quilt that was shown as part of the V & A's 'Quilts 1700 - 2010' exhibition in 2010.  Like Karen's version of Mrs Billings' coverlet, it isn't identical to the original. I was interested in the process of creating a quilt with a similar effect to the original but not necessarily a replica, so I resized the squares so I could use charm packs. It's two thirds the size of the antique quilt. I left off the mini checkerboard blocks visible at the edges of the original quilt in the photo below (one taken by Sally Bramald when we attended the bloggers' preview), because the pieces would have been really tiny - less than 1/2in finished.  More links re my V & A repro quilts here.

 

Many of the quilts from the V & A's exhibition are about to be shown in Brisbane, at the Queensland Art Gallery, 15th June - 22nd September 2013, so our Australian friends will have a chance to see them and, I hope, be just as inspired to make their own modern versions.  If you can get to Brisbane, don't miss these quilts!

Quilts UK, Malvern - coming up this week

 

I'll be at Quilts UK again this week, from Thursday to Sunday.  I have some 'new' Japanese fabrics for sale, and some kimono that haven't had an outing before.  We will be in our usual spot in the Marquee, just at the left at the bottom of the ramp.  This year I'm teaching a one hour workshop every day, so I won't be on the stand all the time, but when I'm not, Glyn will be able to help you out.  Workshop details are here - I'll be in Workshop 4 at 12.45p.m., but pre booking at the workshops desk is essential.

Japanese Circles and Squares with Tweeddale Quilters

Here's some of the fabulous colour schemes created by Tweeddale Quilters at our workshop near Peebles last Wednesday.  I think we had the highest ever proportion of the random version of Japanese Circles and Squares created in this workshop, as so many of the fabrics lent themselves to that arrangement.  The fabrics above are all Australian (I think I recognised one designed by Lisa at Chandler's Cottage) and included native Australian designs and lavish gold prints featuring Aussie flowers, all tied together with that wonderful turquoise wave print.

Two collections featuring a lot of Japanese prints made very different blocks, although several fabrics were similar.  The first included an African wax batik (with the bright green and yellow ochre bands) which had a repeated brown stripe that reminded me of the window bars on traditional Japanese townhouses.  African fabrics often work so well with Japanese prints.  In the second combination, the minimalist pink polkadot print has turned out to be the most dominant fabric.  It looks like a summer kimono fabric I have.  The striped floral print on cream gives the blocks a fresh look, rather 1920s.

Batiks and abstract fabrics are always good choices.  The first set below shows the right angle strip arrangement I tried out on the turquoise & purple workshop sample.  The bright green batik makes these blocks pop, while the intense blue in the random set below looks very intense.

Christine's choice of very coordinated fabrics has an Art Deco feeling, especially the striking black and white swirl print.

 

There were several sets of the original JC&S blocks, where all the outer fabrics match.  These will make lovely, coordinated patchworks - each fabric will be evenly distributed across the quilt.  The second set was coordinated around the horse print (a Laurel Burch design), which will be used for the circles - or perhaps ovals.

  

Hopefully I'll see some of the finished quilts when I'm at the Scottish Quilt Championships in September?

Glyn's latest quilt - work in progress for Loch Lomond Quilt Show

Glyn has been working on this year's entry for the Loch Lomond Quilt Show.  Here are some work in progress photos.  This year's Men Only theme is 'Manmade'. You'll have to wait until after the show to see the finished piece - unless you are visiting of course.  Clues - it is very reflective and in real life is much, much bigger! He's also entered it for 'A Touch of Yellow', this year's theme category at the National Quilting Championships at Sandown Park, and is planning to send it to the Great Northern Quilt Show at Harrogate and the Scottish Quilt Championships at Edinburgh as well.

Here's a useful idea for improvising weights while the 505 spray glue dries -

First stage quilting -

Second stage quilting -

 

Another clue -

Mayday in East Sussex and Kent etc.

I wasn't working on Mayday, so we were up before dawn to watch Shalesbrook Morris  (above) and Ashdown Forest Morris Men dancing in Ashdown Forest.

Yes, you probably can see members of the audience wrapped up in blankets!  The sunrise wasn't that spectacular and it was rather chilly.  The sun is somewhere in this photo.

It had got a bit warmer by 7.30, when Ashdown danced the Boosebeck sword dance at the Hatch Inn.

In the evening, we went to the Kettle Bridge to watch Kettle Bridge Clogs dance.  Glyn got recruited into a public dance at the end.  He'll have to work harder at the right team colours.

Happy (belated) Mayday!  Glyn also tried the waters at the Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells - but the beer tastes better!