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!