Ferret's 'Prometheus' quilt slideshow

This is the quilt that won Best in Show at the National Quilt Championships, among other things! Scroll down this link and click on the slideshow to watch.  It looks even better in real life.

Quiltfest - 'Here Be Dragons' exhibition roundup

Now that Quiltfest's main exhibitions are down, I can post photos showing you what you missed ;-)

Ferret's exhibition at the Pavilion was stunning and we had a very positive response from our visitors, if indeed many of them were somewhat stuck for words initially and it tended to be of the 'WOW!' variety.

I'll leave most of the words in this blogpost to Ferret, via her own blog. She has written several posts about the exhibition, with different photos to those I'm showing here, including comments about the quality of the gallery space (unusually long sightlines), her demo pieces (be quick if you want one of these, as many are already sold) and life in her famous van (inc. gourmet dinner). I'm filling in the virtual gallery experience with general photos of her work in situ, but you'll need to go to her website galleries to see better photos of these quilts.

The photos run, more or less, in the order you'd have seen the show if you'd walked around clockwise, and include details of some of the quilts (detail pictures are after the main photo). Enjoy!


Ferret demoing on the APQS Discovery -


Cutting the remains of the sample panels off the frame on Sunday -


And 'at home' in the van - plenty of home comforts!


Having Ferret demoing and able to meet our visitors every day made a big difference to the Quiltfest experience this year and I'd like to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH FERRET!!! I think Quiltfest 2012 will be one that our visitors remember for a long time.

Quiltfest - workshops and Trading Day roundup

Ferret's wholecloth class was on Saturday in Gresford - she's written it up on her blog here, with some photos of quilters' work. It was fascinating to see how these small pieces progressed over the course of the day and I think she has given people a lot of confidence in playing around with quilting, both freehand and with the walking foot. It will be interesting to see some of these panels finished.

Today's class (photo at top) was run by Ario in Llangollen and focused on using various techniques to produce a piece of fabric inspired by memories. They use a lot of techniques that have crossed over from other crafts like scrapbooking and printmaking, building up pattern, colour and texture on fabric which can then be used for all kinds of special projects. Everyone had a lot of fun with making printing blocks and decorating fabric in many ways, including using the computer printer/scanner to work over previously hand printed materials.

So although one workshop was for machine quilting and the other looked at ways of creating special fabrics, both gave people a lot of freedom to play and discover something new. We will be planning next year's Quiltfest workshops very soon!

Trading Day on Sunday went down well, with several hundred visitors. Sorry, I don't have photos - I seemed to be so busy on the day, it wasn't until the end of the afternoon that I remembered the camera! If anyone who attended trading day has any pics, could you let me have copies please? I have photos of the gallery quilts of course - it's things like the main trading hall and the longarm machine in the foyer I don't have.

Yale College and The Cotton Patch joined forces and brought a longearm machine for quilters to try. The college has the same machine and is currently looking for an artist in residence to use the machine to develop their own work. It will be an unpaid post but could be a great opportunity for the right person.

We will be continuing with the tradition of Trading Day, so next year it looks like it will be on Sunday February 10th, probably with the Quiltfest exhibition running for a week on either side at the Pavilion and for a little longer at the Museum.

Quiltfest today

Today was probably the busiest day so far - Ferret has already blogged about it, so I will just cheat and add a link here.

I would like to give a special mention to these gorgous little pieces though. Ferret has been quilting these A4 panels as demos on the longarm and they are all for sale as souvenirs of Quiltfest and (very affordable) small pieces of her work - just the right size for popping into a picture mount and frame. The multicoloured feathers (detail above) has come home with me, as my Quiltfest souvenir.



It reminds me very much of the centre of Leather Star, one of my favourites - so subtle, and I love the tactile quality of the quilting against the leather - even though the rainbow feathers are really much more freely quilted.


Today she had some stunning panels on the go, like miniature versions of parts of her Greek Fossils quilt, including the minute pebble stitching. I don't have pics of these, but this is a detail of Greek Fossils, so you can get an idea of how the quilting looks.


We have a workshop with her at Gresford tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone makes there - it is her Wholecloth workshop, so there will be some very interesting results and lots of fun making them.

Quiltfest - set up day one

A busy day today putting up Ferret's exhibition at the Royal International Pavilion - now to print off all the labels for our opening tomorrow! All the info about Quilfest is on our website - www.quiltfest.org.uk

Quiltfest - sneak previews!

I've been compiling a list of images of some of the quilts we will be showing, so if you want to see these in real life, visit Quiltfest before 12th February - the following links will take you to images from Ferret's gallery (mainly!). The photo above shows her 'Victorian Steampunk' dress, which also be on show, on its first appearance at the Fashion sans Frontiers show at Festival of Quilts in 2010.


Mother

Daughter

Heat

Nude with Rope

Herd Mentality

Greek Fossils - photos can't really do justice to this quilt where the design is created by amazing thread play (same goes for Ferret's other quilts really - you just have to see them to get all the details).

Leather star

Leather Feathers

Bad Rain

Dragon 1 - the new one
Dragon - the original

Ferret's famous coat - photo further down that blog link, with pictures of Leather Star at the beginning.

For the trading day - Phoenix Rising

There are some work in progress photos of Quiet Moment and Dragon 1 on Ferret's blog - http://ferfab.blogspot.com/ - quite a few of the quilts are also in the 'Virtual Galleries' section on her blog, which shows pics from her solo show at Festival of Quilts in 2009.

We will be hanging Ferret's exhibition at Llangollen tomorrow and the 'Bucktful of Fabrics' exhibition at the Museum on Wednesday morning. Magie Relph's exhibition also features
work by guests Janice Gunner, Ann Mayner and Dorita Smith. Here are some links to a couple of Magie's quilts we will be showing -

Say Africa

Flower Stems

The backs of these quilts are also made of gorgeous African wax prints - I wish we could display them so you could see both sides, but alas that isn't possible. I'll try to take some photos as we set up the exhibition, so you can see how fablously colourful they are from the back as well as the front. This exhibition will be a really gorgeous shot of intense colours. Debbie and I spent most of Saturday afternoon matching up the quilts with hanging laths ready for a quick setup on Wednesday, and I feel like I know the backs of some of them just as well as the fronts :-) !

We are also going to have this at the Pavilion gallery - guaranteed to make you smile! comparethequilt.com

Have fun exploring the links!

Great Northern Quilt Show - Ferret's quilts

Ferret is going to be our featured quilt artist for Quiltfest next February and (fingers crossed!) her 'Leather Star', which won First place in Small Wallhangings, will be on show, along with a lot of her other stunning work. Click here to read her blogpost about the show.


The back of the famous coat -


Jane Rollason is hoping to have 'Holiday Starfire' and 'Ferret's Fractals' at Quilt Expo in Viville, France, next July, where she is featuring quilts with black backgrounds in the exhibition in the local church. Click the photo of 'Holiday Starfire' below to watch a video of Ferret quilting it.


Rather puzzlingly, the portrait of Cy wasn't placed in the Small Wallhanging section, which seemed rather odd as it is another excellent piece of work.

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!