Quilts came home today

My Kona Bay 2009 challenge winner, "Butterfly Dance", and my Batik Beauties entry, "Fish and Chips" both came home yesterday, in time for show and tell at Chester Ps & Qs last night. As usual, I never got to show the completed quilts to my own groups, because they weren't finished until the last possible minute.


It is always nice to have quilts come home after touring. Grosvenor Exhibitions did a great job on the packaging, with loads of bubble wrap (which has gone to be recycled for packaging at our local Cats' Protection charity shop).

Next year's challenge is "Cherry Blossoms and Maple Leaves" for the Oriental Fabric Challenge (formerly the Kona Bay Challenge) and "A Batik Landscape" for Batik Beauties. You can get entry forms from Grosvenor Exhibitions. There's plenty of time left to plan and make your entries - the batik challenge has a set size of 1 metre and the other challenge a minimum size only (it doesn't have to be large) - so why not have a go?

Chester Ps & Qs UFO day and more Sandown Park pictures

The UFO day was organised by Krysia and co. from Chester Ps & Qs, at one of our regular meeting venues at Burley Hall, Waverton, near Chester.

In case you are asking, "What is a UFO?", in quilting terms it is an UnFinished Object, also sometimes described as a WIP (Work In Progress). Mine didn't quite qualify as the longest-running UFO there, as it was narrowly beaten by a sampler quilt.


I started this quilt in 2001, as a 70th birthday present for my mum. My dad got a double bed quilt for his 70th birthday, so she suggested a single - to go in my old room. Before I could get it finished, they moved another bed in there... so I now had the problem of really having to make TWO quilts. As I'd made this from the contents of our 1970s/1980s scrap bag (lots of Laura Ashley, Liberty, Viyella etc.) there was the slight snag of finding enough similar fabrics NOW! Over the last few years, I've checked out sales tables when I visited quilt groups and Guild events, and bought up as many similar fabrics as I could find. I was even lucky enough to find the same border fabric in another colourway. So this autumn I'll start the other quilt (but won't take too long to get it finished).

The inspirations are in Åsa Wettre's "Old Swedish Quilts", a great book for all vintage quilt fans (looks like it may be out of print now). The busy, scrappy centre combined with a wide but fairly plain border is typical. I had to resist the temptation to add pattern to the border and it will be quilted with parallel lines, 1 1/2in apart. I'm using perle thread and quilting in big stitch, which isn't really traditional (now I've got to hunt out enough thread for that border - 80 metres minimum!*) The wadding (batting) is "Matilda's Own", a lovely 80% wool, 20% polyester from Australia and it so nice to stitch through.

Now I'm pushing to finish the quilt, as I've entered it in the "Traditional" category at Festival of Quilts at the NEC in August. Compared with the other UFOs today, it seemed huge, but it is only a standard single bed quilt - 92in x 72in approx.

It is called "Luleå Blockhus" (Luleå Log Cabin), although it will probably be written in the programme as "Lulea", as it is on the quilt label I've been sent. Seems Creative Exhibition's word processing can't cope with some letter accents.

Continuing the scrappy look, here's my Scrappy Pinwheel hanging at Sandown Park. Blocking it did improve the quilt.


The Kona Bay Challenge quilts were displayed where I could get a better photo of "Butterfly Dance". It will also be shown at all the Grosvenor Exhibitions Autumn Quilt Shows in 2009.


* I sorted out my perle no.12 threads... including some Valdani perle, with beautiful shaded effects. Turns out there is an amazing 100 metres in each of these tightly wound balls of thread, so I should be OK! I have a choice of two different shaded golds or a red/burgundy varigated thread, which I bought several years ago to finish the scrap quilt project - luckily I haven't started using them for anything else. By compairson, the Anchor no. 12 perle I've been using in the central patchwork have only 60 metres per ball.

Quilts UK, Malvern

I won a few rosettes!

"Butterfly Dance" won the Kona Bay Challenge! It makes all the last minute quilting feel really worthwhile. So from this -


to this, in just five and a half days - four and a half days quilting, with one day to bind, add beaded embellishments and the hanging sleeve.


This morning, I found out my "Hakone Yosegi Sampler", from "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match" had won second place in Bedquilts, plus the Piecing award and the Sampler Quilt award. Wow! My "Kamon Sampler" from the same book won the Sampler Quilt award last year, so I'll be taking the same perpetual award home for another year. I am so thrilled to win these, especially as the "Hakone Yosegi Sampler" is a fairly quiet quilt colourwise, although it has some quite tricky piecing in it (as well as some easier blocks).

I'm hoping to have a good look around the show over the weekend, as everyone has been saying how great the quilts are this year. There are a few quilts made using other blocks from "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match", so I'm hoping to take some photos of those and, if I can contact the maker(s) and get their permission, to post them here.

As usual, Quilts UK has a holiday feeling to it, with everyone out to enjoy themselves, get loads of inspiration and maybe add a bit to their fabric stash. If you are going to be visiting, drop by and say hello!

Those Kona Bay fabrics...

I should have mentioned in my last post where I got those fabrics from!

There's an interesting blog post about butterfly symbolism on the Kona Bay Blog.

The Nobu Fujiyama prints (the ones with the figures) were from Debsews. I also got the turquoise blue background print with the maple leaves and cherry blossoms from Debbie, but bought it back in 2006 I think - I seem to recall I bought it to coordinate with the cranes fabric used for the Yamagata quilt challenge.

The splendid black print that goes right across the shoulders came from Step by Step Patchwork Centre (they will be at Quilts UK, Malvern, next week and are the contest sponsors). I'd seen it online but realised the possibilities once I'd seen the whole width. Some of the Kona Bay scenic panels are printed twice across the width, but this one was printed with a half drop on the repeat, so I could use it without repeating the castle or the moon too obviously.

One of the most useful fabrics in this piece turned out to be the one with the pine trees and cranes, with large abstract fans with water swirls and seigaiha (ocean wave) patterns. I wanted to include pine trees and had another Kona Bay print earmarked for this, the January print from their Tsuki no Hana (Flowers of the Seasons) 2007 (?) collection, which I was originally going to use behind the seated princess figure. However, there wasn't enough contrast with the figure and I also wanted to blend part of the figure's original background with this extra fabric (so I didn't have to try to applique any really fiddly bits!), so I used a small plum design there instead. I had the same plum print as a backup in the more purple version, which I nearly used for the red mist clouds at the bottom edge, but that got replaced with a very subtle sayagata (saya brocade pattern) print, also by Kona Bay, which was a subtle way to include that pattern - one used by the Imperial court. The sayagata print (which I also bought in black and gold, just in case!) came from our local travelling fabric shop, the fabulous Dot Sherlock's Quilter's Needs (you can catch Dot at Chester P's & Q's meetings). I appears again in the uchikake kimono's padded hem.

Back to the pines - I bought this fabric because it looked like it could be useful for a project, but it didn't have the immediate "wow" factor of the Tsuki no Hana pine trees (which has masses of gold overprinting and looks just like a seventeenth century screen - Rimpa style?). In the end, it worked out better than my original choice would have done, as it doesn't detract from the central panel with the dancers.

Another print which turned out to be just right for this project is the lovely cranes and misty mountains I used for the fusuma sliding door panels.

There are a handful of fabrics that aren't Kona Bay - the red and gold crackle I used for the iko kimono stand (the brighter red makes the kimono's red look more subtle I think), the printed stripe used for the tatami mats (Moda), the black and white woven tsumugi striped kimono cotton used for the veranda floorboards and the butterfly fabric (not sure who made this).

This kuro tomesode kimono with a wonderful palace scenes (from The Tale of Genji) was the inspiration for the general layout of the quilt, although there was only space to have one room with all the appliqued dancers!

Reiko was very enthusiastic about the Nobu Fujiyama fabrics when I sent her an early "work in progress" photo, so I sent her a selection for a New Year present. I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes with her pieces.

This is how my quilt looked in the very early stages -

Butterfly Dance quilt

What I'm working on today - handquilting -


The uchikake (kimono robe) is about life size - 60in long! I couldn't make it any smaller and be able to use the applique figures realistically, cut from the Kona Bay range designed by Nobu Fujiyama. This meant that the top of the uchikake is wider than the 44in castle panel width, so I had to piece it on the left sleeve. Click the photo to see it in more detail.

Peaceful Heart Quilt Group are having another exhibition in Yuza in October 2009, so this quilt will be one of my contributions. I really should get my "Yamagata" challenge quilt done for that exhibition too. On a shorter timescale, "Butterfly Dance" has to be finished by Monday lunchtime!

I raced to get it tacked last night at Gresford Craft Group and my friend Annette helped me out - thanks, or I'd still be tacking!

Sister's Choice challenge - Quiltfest 2008

This is the first year that Quiltfest, the annual quilting exhibition at the Royal International Pavilion, Llangollen, has had a themed competition http://www.quiltfest.org.uk/ . The exhibition is in it's seventh year and displays quilts in an art gallery, rather differently from most quilt shows. (Double left click any photos to see them in more detail).

Here's what I wrote for my entry -

Overlapping one block with another produced an interesting pattern, as the triangle square pairs from one block can become part of another. They also looked like butterfly wings in my sketch, so I decided to go for Japanese prints, with a panel of Kyoto’s Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) that I was given as a present. “Onēsan” (oh – nee – san) is the name given to an elder geisha or older maiko by her apprentice (a more junior maiko).

Val Shields gave me a kinkakuji panel as an "omiyage" present from her trip to Quilts in the Garden exhibition at Trentham last year, and I wanted to use it in my Sister's Choice hanging. Naturally, I couldn't find where I'd stashed that fat quarter, so I had to buy it again... I compensated for that by managing to make the rest of the quilt largely from my scrap box, using a scrap strip from the "geisha & waterfall" panels I sold last year for the sakura cherry blossom squares and dark green squares, plus those with the golden moon segments.

There wasn't much time to quilt it, so I did one of my variable grid machine quilting designs. I started by quilting the top and bottom sections (the kinkakuji panel) with parallel lines, a quarter inch apart, using a varigated "King Tut" cotton thread (blue, purple, turquoise and green). Then I quilted a water swirl through the centre, using one of Madeira's metallic shaded threads (gold & copper twist on a black base). I added a second set of lines in the King Tut thread, crossing over the metallic quilting. This gives an ever changing grid all over the quilt - like engraved cross hatching - and a sense of movement, hinting at swirling blossoms. Here are some details (slightly over exposed).

The grid gives a net-like effect over the fish pond, which reminds me of the anti-heron netting my kimono sewing teacher, Sachiko, had over the pond in her front garden !

The quilt is just 30in x 18in.