Three sashiko classes and a quilt

I had three sashiko classes one after the other at the end of last week.  The first was the beginning of the Yuza and Shonai Sashiko course at Kaleidoscope near Glasgow.

The second was at The Peacock and the Tortoise in Perth - Introduction to Shonai Sashiko.

 

 This course introduces several hitomezashi (one stitch sashiko) patterns briefly.

Carol started making a sampler with yellow thread on brown, going for a retro look, and had made some cushion panels with her squares from our earlier workshop there.

The final class was at Edinburgh Patchwork, where we had the first session of the Yuza and Shonai Sashiko course, the same one we are doing at Kaleidoscope.

Here's a selection of the variations on rice stitch and other patterns that were made.

As well as the workshops, I got the 'Cinnabar and Nutmeg' frame quilt ready for Today's Quilter magazine.

It has now gone away for photography, so we can't use it at home for a while!  I want to add a lot more quilting when it comes back too.  It will be a very cosy quilt to use.

Working on this today...

I've been quilting like mad on this for a while now - and it is 'only' 98in square!  My quilt inspired by a patchwork I saw at the V & A in 2010 is nearing completion.  The pattern will be published in Today's Quilter magazine quite soon.  It has a name now - Cinnabar and Nutmeg.  Thanks to Katie Chaplin of Japan Crafts for suggesting Nutmeg (after her cat) and Glyn for coming up with 'cinnabar'.

Red and Brown medallion quilt - an update

I haven't abandoned my blog posts about my China trip, but I wanted to update you on the progress of my red and brown medallion quilt.  As you can see from my last post about it, I changed the cornerstones on the outer ninepatch border above.  I liked the print I used but the colourway was too light, so I was pleased to find exacly the same pattern in a slightly darker tan, rather than the original cream, colourway.

I have been dragging my heels on this one because of the size of the quilt.  As you can see in the photo above, it is already pretty big, and there are three more borders to add - a red zigzag, a second Flying Geese border and a final Nine Patch on point border.  I resized all the blocks inside the dark border (shown in the original below - click here to go to the V & A's website) to make good use of modern precuts - jelly rolls and charm squares.  I have made the outer Flying Geese and Nine Patch borders with the same size pieces as the centre, again to make best use of precuts.  The original is about 100in square.  With the red zigzag border, mine is going to end up 110in or thereabouts.

I've cut out the red zigzag border and assembled one of them, plus made my outer Flying Geese borders and all the outer Nine Patch border blocks (I haven't assembled the outer Ninepatch border yet).  If I add the red zigzag border, the quilt will come out a whopping 110in square. At this size, the Nine Patches in the outer border are all complete (no half Nine Patches like in the original). I can just about fit this onto my quilt frame for tacking. If I leave it off and shorten the outer Flying Geese and Nine Patch borders, it will finish at around 100in square, and have half Nine Patches at the end of each outer strip.

I am thinking I should leave off the red zigzags for various reasons.  It would make the quilt smaller and a bit more manageable.  If the quilt finishes at 110in, I don't even have a bed big enough I could use it on (although that is not really a consideration).  But now it is destined to be a magazine project, and the instructions will allow you to stop adding borders when the quilt is big enough.  So should I make it the full 110in square, i.e. super king size? How do you think it will look without the red zigzag border?  I have backing and wadding big enough for 110in and I can display a quilt this big at most quilt shows I attend (my quilt stand is 3m or 118 wide).

I have been pondering this for ages!  Now I need to finish this quickly, I have to decide.  Opinions please!

My Chinese blog posts will resume tomorrow.

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!

Red and brown repro quilt - corners

It's time for some fabric decisions for the red and brown quilt before I can go any further with adding the borders.  I thought I had the perfect fabric for the cornerstones on the first nine patch border, but after a lot of looking at it, I think it is too light (Glyn does too).

Here's an image of the original inspiration for this quilt, for reference, plus a link to the info on the V & A's site (unfortunately the image resolution isn't very good).  We are comparing the first ninepatch border this time, not the outer one.

 

The fabric used for the cornerstones on the inner ninepatch border on the original is the same brown leafy fabric used as the background for the next border - the red zigzags on brown.  I'm using this brown swirl print for mine -

 

I don't think I have enough for the cornerstones as well, but I can always order another fat quarter.  On the other hand, my quilt has a lot more fabrics than the original, so do I need to repeat this one?  It is also used for some of the setting triangles in the outer nine patch border, where I will be using another print for all the triangles, slightly darker than this (to focus more on the centre, the fabrics on my quilt get slightly darker towards the outer edges).

This is a detail of the fabric.  I love the print and it was available in a darker shade, but I didn't buy any at the time and it isn't available now (it was from the 'Maison de Garance' range).  Glyn suggested replacing the cornerstones with something 'more interesting', perhaps repeating the four patches or pinwheels used as cornerstones in previous border rounds, but I would rather stick with a single square, as per the original quilt. Maybe repeating the swirl fabric is the way to go?

 

The cornerstones in the final border have been impossible to replicate.  There just isn't anything like that crazy faux fur spotty fabric out there!  Modern faux fur prints are too realistic and the scale of the spots tends to be too small.

 

These three, from Moda's Hope collection, are possibilities.  I have used the two with floral circles elsewhere in the quilt, to eke out the Maison de Garance range and stop the quilt being too reliant on one fabric collection.

   

The first two are perhaps too regular?  The third one, although a floral, seems to have echoes of the faux fur in the shape of the leaves. What do you think?

All the fabrics are from New Threads - Meg seems to have pretty much everything I need for this quilt!

V & A brown and red medallion quilt

After a break of nearly two years on this project, when the patchwork and fabrics were usually several hundred miles apart, it's about time I got the patchwork finished. The centre of my quilt is on the left and the original is on the right.  I resized some elements to make better use of modern precuts, like 5in charm squares, so the Flying Geese border is larger and has eleven rather than fourteen units on each side.  I used squares on point rather than the double diamonds in the fifth border too and added a solid 1in border inside the first nine patch on point border.

Initially, I wasn't going to make it as large as the original quilt at the V & A - 255 x 259cm (100 x 102in).  Now it looks like it is going to end up as my first king size bed quilt :-).  Once the second solid border is added, the quilt will measure 72in and 87 after the red zigzag border.  Resizing the second Flying Geese border to the same size as the first one (4in deep) adds another 8in, to 95in, and a second nine patch on point border adds 17in, making the total 112in before adding a plain outer border frame.  That's 4in wider than most wide quilt backings but not as wide as a king size wadding, so I won't need to seam that.

  

Both Flying Geese borders are made from only two fabrics in the original quilt, but I had already added more variety to the first one (see first photo), keeping the colours consistent but making each unit in a different fabric combination.  Maybe the second border should be all the same two fabrics?  I'm keeping to just two fabrics for the red zigzags.

The National Quilt Championships - last weekend

I'm all packed up and ready to go for Textile Extravaganza in Llantrisant this weekend, so it's about time I got the photos up from Sandown Park last weekend.  As you can see from the photo above, the original version of 'Masu', made from Japanese kimono silks and wools with a 1 1/2in finished strip width, ha's been getting a bit of a revival lately and I've reprinted the pattern.  This is still one of my favourite quilts.

I named my first Wrexham Quilting Circle challenge from who-knows-how-many-years-ago (I'm guessing about 12!) 'Garden Party', so it just had to go into the theme category with the same name. The original challenge was a Split Nine Patch block (in the centre) and I just got carried away, playing about with progressions in colour and value.  It gives the quilt a slightly 3D effect in places.

Yes, it didn't quite get part 1 of the quilting finished.... spot the marked but unstitched lines in the centre panel :-(  I thought I'd pulled a muscle in the side of my left hand the week before the show - I now think I had a trapped nerve.  It's fine now, but I couldn't stitch at my usual speed so I didn't get this finished. There's a little more quilting to be added in the large squares border, the plain strip borders, the sawtooth panels at top and bottom and the outer border before it's finished.  It should appear as a pattern in Popular Patchwork this autumn.

My other themed entry was for 'In the Pink'. It is made to the same block layout as a quilt in the V & A's collection, after I made a 2/3 scale repro of the original patchwork. Ferret hand longarm quilted it in brown and lime green, which helps to get the pink under control for me ;-)  I'm not really into pink and have only used pink in a handful of quilts.  The pattern will be published in Fabrications.

 

 My taupe sampler was in Bed Quilts -

Ferret scooped up Best in Show along with a handful of other awards.  'Prometheus' is better in her photos than mine, so here are a couple of links to her blog - click the photos here for really detailed views. In real life, it is even more stunning than in the photos.  'Greek Fossils' is it's close relative, if you think you've seen something similar from Ferret.  I know there are some blog posts showing 'Prometheus' under construction - can I find them? Ferret - can you send me those links please?

BQ17 was one of my favourites - until I can get my hand on my showguide (accidentally bagged up with stuff for this weekend and now in the car), I don't know the maker's name, so I can't contact her/him for permission to show a photo of the quilt.  It was a deceptively simple strip design but with a subtle rythym to it.  I'll try to find out who made it so I can upload a photo.

Some other quilts I particularly enjoyed included those from the Sutton Hoo exhibit - here is one of Kim Shaw's pieces (I know Kim will be OK with me featuring her work).  If you go to Sutton Hoo, another of her panels is hanging at the cafe entrance.  I love the atmospheric quality of these pieces.  They capture the mood of the burial site for me. There were some stunning wallhangings in that exhibit, some taking their inspiration from the landscape of the site, others from the treasures found there.
 

 

I was on the judging panel so that meant I got to award a 'Judge's Choice'.  The only criteria for this is to choose the quilt that appeals to you most from the competition quilts, i.e. the one you'd most like to take home - if you could! I chose 'The Colours of Alba' by Frieda Oxenham.  I've admired her quilts for a long time and her use of beads to accent her stitching is so painstaking.  This wallhanging just shimmers and the beads and stitching adds an extra wash of colour over the fabric.  I missed this quilt when it was at Loch Lomond in 2011 and the Scottish Quilt Championships that year, so it was a good opportunity to be able to study it in more detail. Frieda's blog makes interesting reading too.  Hopefully I'll be able to post a photo later.

There seemed to be more quilts than ever this year!  I'll be adding another blog post soon showing the quilts from Peaceful Heart Quilt Group, Yuza Sashiko Guild and Reiko Domon, which were also on show.

UPDATE - Here's some photos of Frieda's quilt.  Hopefully the second one conveys something of the fantastic surface texture and the shimmer of the beads.  Beautiful.

V & A checkerboard quilt - revisited

This afternoon, I got the corner triangle sections added to this contemporary fabric remake of the V & A checkerboard squares patchwork I did over Christmas (more info on the first version here), as shown above. The fabrics are all from Moda's Sultry range, by Basic Grey. The first version I made over the Christmas holiday is shown below, when I was attempting to capture the mood of the original quilt. The blocks in my version are smaller (4in finished squares rather than 6in), so I ditched the small scale (1/2in squares) mini checkerboard blocks from the design and substituted them with sixteen patches with 1in squares - there's still quite a lot of those.


I found this quilt intriguing because, on the face of it, it looks like the squares were arranged and then the patchwork assembled in strips, at least that's how most quilters would approach it today. As I wrote in earlier blog posts (go back to December 2010), the original quilt clearly wasn't made this way and is really a medallion or 'frame' quilt, even though the border progression is camouflaged by the checkerboard squares. It has a lot of complex rotational and reflective symmetry going on in what, at first glance, looks like very little organisation of the fabrics (there are a few deliberate oddities in there though). I love quilts like this, were there is so much to look at and retain interest in the prints, even in simple matchy matchy fabric games.

The pink version was made the same way, working from the centre outwards. There were fewer fabrics in this, although I used (probably) the whole Sultry range. The dark browns give the central arrangement more weight and drama than in the original, although the darker patches don't extend throughout the piece quite as much.


The pink takes on the role of the red and the lime green, to a certain extent, the yellow. The increasingly busy prints in the patchwork's corners and the low value contrast between the colours merges one patch into another far more than the original maker did. Including some of the lime greens in the checkerboards at random makes the blocks pop.


Why do something like this? It has been a learning curve of a different kind but, as well as the obvious desire to have those museum quilts for myself (remade to look close to the originals), the activity of selecting the fabrics and going through the same stages of construction (even if by machine, not hand) is one way of getting inside the head of the original maker - if that doesn't seem a peculiar thing to say! We have so little infomation about the people who made these quilts in museum collections, this is one way of making a connection, at least for me.

Why choose a very obviously modern range like Sultry for the second patchwork? Largely for a ultilitarian reason - it really was what I had on hand. I used the range for the Log Cabin chapter in '130 Little Quilt Blocks' ('130 Mini Quilt Blocks' in USA & Australia) because I wanted a very bright, contemporary look for the traditional Log Cabin blocks. Starting out with a Layer Cake (10in square stack) and a Honey Bun (1 1/2in strip cut, like a Jelly Roll), I still had most of the cake left over and the strips hadn't been used at all. Being a 2009 range, I couldn't find any more in the shops, but spotted two fat quarter bundles up for grabs on eBay, plus some yardage in the dark brown houndstooth (I will also use that for binding, while the repro version will have the edges turned in and butted, English style). Bringing the patchwork bang up to date in the fabric selection also shows just how timeless many of these antique quilt designs can be.

Here are some of the 'mix & match' computer generated quilts created for '130 Little Quilt Blocks', just the ones done from my reference photos - they look much better in the book.


Quilting ideas - I will use Mountain Mist 100% cotton wadding (batting) for the repro version as it is very thin and excellent for handquilting and 80/20 cotton/poly for the Sultry one for alittle more 3-D to the quilting (I will preshrink the wadding though). The repro to be handquilted, with a grid and concentric squares similar to the original, while the pink will be machine quilted - I acquired a stunning lime green thread shading through to white while at Quilts UK, and will use that. Not quite sure of how I'll quilt it, but it will probably be something similar to the original, just using the harder lines of the machine quilting to make it look different.

Next? Sewing a border onto my repro patchwork based on the Sarah Wyatt quilt (also in the V & A) . Big tacking (basting) session coming up!

Oh yes, and I don't 'do' pink... usually...

V & A exhibition - thoughts on the King George coverlet

This astonishing piece of patchwork, "King George Reviewing the Troops", was a big talking point for us at Wednesday's preview. Curator Sue Prichard had already written about it on her blog, which only served to make me seek it out asap when I arrived (although I did get stalled by the clamshell bed drapes). The photo above is courtesy of the V & A and shows only the central panel, so you can't see the border. The quilt is bordered on all sides with a series of viginettes - the second and fourth photos are from Janet Bottomley's blog (hope that's OK with you Janet - I wish I had taken a many more photos in the exhibition, but my textile conservation mode wouldn't let me!)

It is a puzzling piece! I added the following comment to Sue's blog a couple of days ago - she makes a point about "the sense that it is perhaps two projects" -

After seeing the coverlet at Wednesday's preview, it certainly has the feeling of being two projects - perhaps two UFOs that were combined into one larger piece? Perhaps the stitcher (or stitchers) used an already completed centre panel as a background for their (probably slightly later) pictorial panels.

Having looked as closely as possible at the high resolution image on the V & A memory stick, so far I haven't identified any fabrics used in both the picture panels and the patchwork roundel backgrounds (the way the maker(s) have used different fabrics to suggest grass, planking, tiled floors etc. is lovely and so much the way a modern quilter would use prints). Perhaps the maker organised her fabrics into two groups - fabrics for the quilt centre and those for the scenes - but it feels more likely that they were the product of two different fabric collections. Continuity in fabrics over a large "scrap quilt" background like this one is hard enough without ensuring that they are reused in the border.

I have also tried to look for similarities in the stitching between the roundels and the picture panels - while these don't look (in the photo) to be necessarily the work of one person, I think I'm also detecting differences between individual roundels. However, the resolution of the image is just a tiny bit too low to be able to see the stitches as clearly as I would need to for this. Next time I visit, I must bring a magnifying glass! Having organised several community projects involving English paper piecing (the technique used here) I've noticed that there are subtle differences in the whipstitching from one stitcher to another - a little like handwriting, with some stitchers always slightly slanting their stitches left or right, differences in the number of stitches to the inch etc. Even stitchers with similar levls of experience produce recognisably different whipstitches.

Could it have been a project between friends or members of a family perhaps?

A fascinating piece of work that kept drawing me back...

Something else has been bugging me about the overall look of this piece and I think I've worked out what it is. There is something peculiar about the position of the pictorial panels. I'm not refering to the central panel, which seems superimposed on the background piecing, giving the sense of two patchwork projects combined (perhaps even three combined pieces - I must check the fabrics in the larger sun and moon circles that are partially overlapped by the central applique).

Think about it this way - if you were designing your patchwork from scratch and you were going to piece all those amazing picture panels, where would you place them on your quilt to have the most impact? Think also that your quilt is going to be displayed on a bed. Would you consign them to the outer border? Probably not. Would you put some of the best of them across the top of the quilt, which at best will be laid centrally across the pillows, but more likely the picture panels would fall down the back of the pillows even if it weren't tucked under?

I get the feeling that the circles patchwork was definitely already made when the person (or people) who made the viginettes decided to complete this piece. Otherwise, why would they be right out on the edge?

A border design needs to be integral to a quilt's overall layout, although there's nothing wrong with a fairly plain border too, if that's what the quilt design needs. Many of the best quilts we see at exhibition today don't run out of steam at the edges and have a border design that compliments and frames the quilt centre. But it is unlikely that the most interesting and decorative parts of the quilt would be reserved, with the exception of one larger panel, for the border.

Many of the other patchworks of similar date at the V & A display a tendency for the piecing to become less complex towards the border, something seen on a lot of nineteenth century quilts laid out in a medallion style, where the pieces become larger the further away they are from the centre.

Anyone else musing on this quilt too?

V and A Quilts exhibition - review links

Sally Ward has compiled an interesting links to reviews on her blog Textile Hunter - click here to go straight to the relevant post (Sally's blog is also in my bloglist on the right and is one of the best ways to keep up to date with textile events of all kinds).

I find some of the points of view about the world of quilting rather odd. Quilters seem to have been invisible to society at large, because the quilt revival is a very new thing apparently. How strange. There are surely enough of us that we can't be such a tiny minority.

From The Guardian -

Curator Sue Prichard thinks this enthusiasm is partly due to the global downturn. "I started on this project in 2004. Now there is a huge revival of interest in traditional crafts. There are a lot of women out there who are really keen to learn new skills and step away from their computer and their Blackberry." She thinks many people will come not so much to marvel, but to gain inspiration for their own handiwork.

Oops, I thought the first Festival of Quilts was in 2003, the Knitting and Stitching Shows had been featuring quilting for at least a decade, and Quilts UK, the largest national quilt show before FoQ arrived, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1998 (I still have the anniversary keyring that was given away with the catalogue - and every quilt show catalogue I've attended - the keyring was in my pocket as I walked around at the V & A yesterday...) I think there is a great deal of inspiration to be gathered from the V & A's exhibition and I hope visitors go away inspired. But I continue to be puzzled by the way that quilting is being promoted as a new revival (perhaps the lifestyle sections in the press have got bored with raving on about knitting?)

Ooh yeah, there are many, many quilters who wouldn't for a minute think that quilting is a reason to step away from the computer - rather the opposite, given the amount of quilting info and contacts on the internet.

Times Online -

We’ve had subversive cross-stitchers and club nights for knitters, and now quilting is having a makeover. Frankly, it rocks.

Well, quilting does, but it's the "now" bit that grates somewhat. Why is the world of mainstream journalism only just realising that quilters are here - already here?

The Financial Times -

Anyone seeking proof that a “slow design” movement, is, paradoxically, gathering pace should visit the Victoria & Albert Museum’s first major show of British quilts, where the lost art of easeful living will be celebrated in fabric and stitches.

Like the slow food crusade, slow design is a reaction against modern fast-lane lifestyles. It champions low-tech procedures and craft production methods, espouses environmental concerns and counters today’s throwaway culture with a make-do-and-mend mentality.

Quiltmaking is a perfect example of slow design: stitching itself can be a calming activity.

"Low-tech procedures"? At my workshop today, quilters of various ages were equally at home with the latest in computerised sewing machines and dab hands at using specialised cutting and measuring equipment.

My impression is that journalists feel a need to conform to their readers' notions about what quilting might be - a kind of domestic, tedious, necessary (all those make-do-and-mend references) activity, no doubt with everyone working out of those dressmaking scrap bags that few people have any more (when people suggest I must make my quilts from my dressmaking scraps, I usually point out the kind of clothes I and they are wearing) - rather than presenting it as the creative craft that it is.

Short interviews with some of the contemporary artists and quilters included in The Independent are from a different viewpoint. Grayson Perry writes -

It is a category of traditional object that also looks like a painting, so it translates very well into the art gallery context, in the same way as the pottery does. It is a real object; you could sleep under it if you wanted to, in the same way that you could put flowers in my vase.

I find this is much more to the point about quilts and quilting. They are real, they are tactile, they can be used.

V and A Quilts exhibition - photos

I'm still winding down from yesterday at the V & A (and today's workshop, which is going in my next post).

Since there will be a ton of reviews out there, I'm going to mostly put photos here, plus the exhibition website is here.

The exhibits I found most interesting were the earlier quilts rather than the contemporary pieces. For those of us who attend a lot of national and international quilt shows, the contemporary work has perhaps less impact than for visitors who aren't aware of this facet of the quilting world. I was pleased to find that, alongside the headline grabbing names (Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry), some contemporary quilters from the "real" quilting world (like Pauline Burbidge) were included - but when we can see entire collections of contemporary work at Festival of Quilts, by some of the best modern makers, these quilts at the V & A can't quite compete for attention with some of the extraordinary antique works from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in particular, some of which are being shown for the first time.

The first piece to greet the visitor is this - a faubuous set of eighteenth century bed drapes, displayed like this for the first time (photos courtesy of the V & A - very large image) -




I was delighted to see that the V & A had gone with this option for display (and of course, the last piece in the exhibition are Tracey Emin's bed drapes). The curator's blog covered the debate about these hangings just over a year ago. I posted a comment, which concluded -

Two of the great disadvantages IMHO at many quilt exhibitions and certainly contemporary competitive shows is that space & funds constraints rarely enable any of the bedquilts to be displayed as on a bed, so the placement of the elements of the design don't necessarily work as they are/were intended to do. Having the opportunity to do something more adventurous in display is one area where the V & A exhibitions usually excel.

Standing right next to these drapes while curator Sue Prichard gave an introductory talk was to be in the presence of an amazing set of patchworks. I spotted at least one clamshell which has been pieced, with a strip about 1/4in wide along the clamshell's curve, the fabric print matched perfectly (if you go, see if you can find it - it is on the bottom corner drape, on your left as you face the bed and on the side of the bed, about four feet up - it is a pinky red floral print on white). The array of fabrics in these hangings is endlessly fascinating, including some polka dots - pinky red on white - as well as a kaleidoscope of patterns and colours.

Oh, alright then, this is the pieced clamshell (detail from one of Sally Bramald's photos). Can you just about make out the horizontal line under the lower three flowers?



Rather than overload this post with a lot of high resolution images, which can't really do justice to the quilts and patchworks, here are some images of other displays, including wholecloths displayed within wooden surrounds reminiscent of quilting frames -


More quilts displayed within "bedrooms" -


The Rajah quilt (photo courtesy of the V & A) -


I'll add more short posts on different aspects of the exhibition over the next few days, as I'm still pretty tired and have a lot of other work to catch up on.

The blogger's preview was like a who's who of part of the current quilting world!


There is a special shop for the exhibition, featuring the fabric range reproduced from some of the exhibits -


- and some books...

More soon!