Great Northern Quilt Show, Harrogate

 

Although I couldn't attend the Great Northern Quilt Show to teach and demo this year, as the house move spilled over into my show prep time, we managed to get down to Harrogate for the day on Saturday.  I think this might be the first time I have been to the show as a visitor.  Certainly I've been demoing and teaching there at every show since 2001.  It was very enjoyable seeing the show from the other side of the table and having more time to look at the quilts.  Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so the photos I'm showing here have been taken by friends (don't know how I managed that!)


There were many wonderful quilts both in the competitions and the invited exhibitions, with Ferret's quilts in particular seeming like old friends after Quiltfest 2012, but the one that was the Overall Winner aka Best in Show was my friend Di Abram's latest sampler quilt.  The photo at the top shows her with the quilt - thanks very much to her husband Mike for sending the photos.  She scooped seven awards in all - Machine Quilting, Machine Applique, Sampler, Large Wallhanging, the Sue Belton Award (for Region 13 Guild members) and a Judge's Choice from Jane Rollason, as well as Overall Winner.  Wow!  Di's work is always exquisitely done, with perfectly selected fabrics for the project, very clean machine applique and loads of metallic threads (which always seem to have been on their best behaviour on her machine). Quilt as you go is one of her favourite techniques for her sampler quilts, but I like the way that Di always properly integrates the narrow sashing into the overall quilt design - there is another good example in my 'Compendium of Quilting Techniques' (aka '200 Quilting Tips Techniques and Trade Secrets), as her Celtic sampler is illustrated in the section about quilt as you go.  She really is a perfectionist in her work and it has paid off.

 

Here's a few details, from Fiona Garth's photo review on her blog -

 

Di contributed a three panel wall hanging to my 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' book. Sorry I couldn't find a better photo of it, but this one shows it on the far left of the 'Kamon' section at Quiltfest last February.  You can see a much better image of it in the book of course - it is in the 'Inspiration Gallery' section at the start.

Glyn entered 'Welcome to Scotland' and 'Mission Impossible', winning a Judge's Merit for the latter.

 

I'll do a second post when I get some more photos, as there were two quilts made from patterns in my books, one using some of the kamon crests from the Japanese block books and the other incorporating the 'Irori' design from 'Japanese Quilt Inspirations'.  Next time I'll remember my camera!

Sampler quilt from the Bridlington course

Sylvia has finished her sampler quilt top, started on my sampler quilt course at The Royal, Bridlington, last October/November.  It looks gorgeous, and the warm/dark taupes really work well.  Thanks for the photo!  They've got a course with Jennie Rayment running at the moment, and there are more patchwork and quilting courses for later in the year - check their website (link above) for more info.

I'm looking forward to seeing a photo of this one quilted.  Has anyone else completed a quilt top from that course yet?

More moving

I haven't been blogging quite as often recently because, in between doing talks & workshops & events like trading at Region 13's Quilters' Guild Regional Day last Saturday, I've been moving more of my things up to Scotland.  For the last three weeks, we have had a transit van, so the bigger pieces of furniture, like my antique wardrobe (where I store a lot of my quilts) and my sewing room table, could be moved up to Kettins.  I feel like I'm having to become an expert in logistics, making sure the correct quilts etc. are in the right place for the various workshops I'm teaching, so most of my Japanese quilts are back in Wales at the moment. 

I haven't been including the 'Taisho Variations' quilt (above) in my talks for a while, as it was hiding under some other pieces in my workroom ;-), but I'll be taking it out this Friday and, of course, I'll be including it when I do my three day residential course in Bridlington at the end of the month.  It isn't a sampler quilt, because some of the blocks are duplicates - some blocks are more economical made in pairs, like the kimono blocks.  The sophisticated colours and patterns of Taisho (1912 - 1926) era kimono and obi were an inspiration for this, but all the fabrics are modern patchwork fabrics, so no antique kimono were cut up to make it!  The sashing is only on two sides of each block and reintroduces some of the bolder colours used in them.

 

 


Speaking of sampler quilts, at the Guild Regional Day on Saturday, I found the perfect fabric for sashing a sampler quilt using the paler applique blocks from 'Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks' - thanks to Dot Sherlock's Quilter's Needs once again for coming up with just the right thing! It is an ombre print in shades of light dusty pink through to a very greyed out rose pink.  Originally, I planned to set the blocks square, something like the arrangements above.

 

 

Now I think I would prefer to make two smaller quilts, separating the blocks that have an obvious direction (like those shown above) from those which can be turned through 45-degrees (below).  One quilt would have the blocks set square, the other on point, perhaps with a big stitch quilted motif based on one of the appliques in each 'plain' square.