Festival of Quilts 3 - The Exhibition Stands

You will have probably seen some of the exhibition stands on other blogs and probably with better and more detailed images than I have but I will share the things that stood out for me.  

For the first time this year there was a gallery dedicated to Art Quilt Masters.  

Dorothy Caldwell entered this large piece entitled 'How do we know when it's night?'  It's surface is wonderfully marked and has the addition of areas of fabric and stitch.  The little flashes of colour move the eye around the fabric.

Also in the Art Quilt Masters was this very moving piece below by Christine Chester

The title of this piece is Portraits of a Memory.  On closer inspection you slowly realise that the memory of the man is disintegrating, fading away.  I found it a very powerful piece, made more so that its message is brought home gradually.

SAQA introduced its new exhibition Metaphors on Ageing at the Festival.

Maggie Vanderweit is pictured with her triptych.
 

 Susan Lenz, who I have met previously, made Lift and Tuck shown above.  You can read about it here.  Susan and I met up for a coffee and had a very pleasant hour chatting.

 Meredith R Grimsley made Knit Together In That Secret Place shown above and below.  

Nina Lise Moen who has a blog, featured in the the 25th Anniversary exhibition from Norway.  

Nina Lise also entered an individual quilt which gained her a Highly Commended award.

Mandy Pattulo works in Northumberland with very old and often disintegrating quilts and clothing which she unpicks and reconstructs into new textile collages.   I was entranced by her work and savoured the link with the Banjara textiles mentioned previously.

I was delighted to see Annabel Rainbow at the Show and to get up close to her wonderful series of quilts which form part of the Through Our Hands exhibition which she is curating with Laura Kemshall. 

Annabel had brought part of her studio with her together with parts of Laura's.  I can do no more than direct you to Annabel's and to Laura's blogs for more and better pictures of the quilts.  You may need to scroll down through more than one post. 

I particularly liked work by Esther Bornemisza which created interesting shadows as it hung,

I am fascinated by textiles that allow you to see through them in a partial way or which are changed/affected by light passing through.

One other piece of work that allowed shadows to fall behind it was Red Stones 2 by Dianne Firth:

 Hopefully I have linked to the correct artist. 

That's all for today.  I've almost finished but I'll be back with one more post about Festival before I return to our recent cruise.  Then maybe I'll get back to my own creative efforts which have been put on the back burner just lately.
 

Festival of Quilts

It was a week earlier than last year but last week saw me heading off to Birmingham for the annual beanfeast that is the Festival of Quilts!  This amazing mecca for all things quilty and textiley provides a great focus for all manner of ladies and sometimes gentlemen and, despite a change of promoter, excelled itself again.  You will probably have seen some reports on line already and I would recommend you to look at Maggi Birchenough's blog and Lis Harwood's blog for their view and favoured pieces. (Maggi has a particularly good report on the Horizons exhibition).

I took over 250 photos so I won't put them all up but will give you a flavour of the things that caught my eye.

As ever, there was a keen sense of expectation and excitement as people queued to get in.  I had bought a so-called VIP ticket which meant that I didn't have to queue (that was its main benefit in my experience).

I did of course make a bee-line to see my own quilt which was in good company hanging next to Bailey Curtis's Cornish Memories a&b based on a residency in Cornwall and visits to standing stones and Newlyn.

 

 Hilary Gooding, a fellow Contemporary Quilter, was awarded a Highly Commended for her piece 'Straplines' which featured many familiar sayings.

This quilt by Kathy Unwin titled 'Shieling' appealed to me both for it's colours and for the surface texture achieved by the added fabrics and stitch.

Inspired by music, Allegro Ma Non Troppo by Merce Gonzalez Desedamas.

Hilary Beattie's On The Edge which started as a seascape but evolved into an expression of Hilary's feelings about security, stability and safety.  It won her a Judges' Choice Highly Commended award.

Hilary worked like a dervish on her stand demonstrating her creative skills and promoting her new book.

My lovely friend Sandra Wyman and her beautiful Dragonfly which earned her some excellent comments from the judges.

This double faced offering by Spanish quilters won the Group Quilt category.  It was inspired by the changing electronic street publicity banners that are so much part of our cities.

This amazing, broken surface is part of a quilt in the Banjara Historic Indian Textile collection on display in one of the 'white' exhibition spaces.  All the textiles on display had had long and hard previous lives and bore the evidence of their use. This particular surface made me think of the natural lines on the beach when the tide has gone out.  Thoughts of trying to achieve a similar surface by exposing fabric to the elements are buzzing in my head.

Another piece by a friend, this is Bowled Over by Wendy who blogs as Emmelines Place.  I watched parts of this flower bowl being made and I think it's beautiful.

This is Uta Lenk's Quilt Creation 'Euro Blues' which contains the word, blue, in about 25 languages and the single block log cabin folded symbolises the House of Europe visible from different angles.

  This fabulous Quilted Corracle by Linzi Upton won the Quilt Creations category.

OK.  Enough for one post.  I'll leave you with this very colourful lady I spied in the aisles:

More soon!

Effie Galletly

Today was the Area day for Region 10 of the Quilters Guild which covers Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland and after an enjoyable morning of catching up with friends, quilters' bingo and a very tasty lunch we were treated to a talk and slideshow by Effie Galletly.

I had seen Effie's work a couple of years ago at Quiltfest in Llangollen so it was good to see her inspirational sources and to hear a little of how she constructs her quilts.  (For my sins, I didn't realise that Effie had been instrumental in setting up the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilters Guild).

It was very interesting to see the types of photographs that Effie uses when she is looking to make her quilts and after a short while I began to see the shapes that could be translated into fabric. 

Interestingly some of the skies were formed by long running stitch rather than actual piecing of fabrics but equally some were pieced to express the changes in light and the movement across the sky.  While Effie uses some of her own dyed and painted fabrics she also makes full use of commercial fabrics and batiks if they give her the tones and textures that she wants.

The quilts in this presentation reflected the scenery of the Outer Hebrides and other islands off the west coast of Scotland and as we are going to Arran and Mull later in the year I enjoyed seeing her photos and seeing it through her eyes, especially with the idea of making interpretations in cloth.  I shall be reviewing my photos of landscapes with new eyes.

I have been a fan of Effie's and of Susan Denton who Effie had learnt from previously for some time and just need to find the time, yet again, to explore the avenues their work opens up.  Sadly Susan Denton does not have a strong internet presence so I have not been able to include a link.  I can, however, include a photo or two from the 2010 Festival Of Quilts.

 Susan uses a lot of recycled material in her work and also makes use of surface stitching to add to the texture.  If the chance arose I would love to take a workshop with her.  Talking of workshops, the Festival of Quilts workshop programme is now available if you haven't already heard.  Nip over to the Twisted Thread site and see if you can be tempted.  Bookings for members open at midday on 1 March and for non-members at midday on 8 March.  Decisions, decisions!