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!

A bit more catching up

Some time ago Annabel, who used to blog as The Wittering Rainbow, was going to send me a piece of work she had done on the theme of snowdrops. Unfortunately for me but happily for Annabel, the snowdrops are still doing the rounds of various exhibitions. By way of recompense, which wasn't necessary at all, Annabel has very kindly sent me a beautiful bookmark which she had also made. The colour is beautiful, you may have noticed that I like gold, and I will enjoy using it to mark my place. I think Annabel had dyed the fabric herself and I think she has used Angelina in the squares. Lovely!

The card is laying on a flyer for Ineke Berlyn whose work I also admire and whose book "Landscape in Contemporary quilt" is in my collection.

I finally got another colour set made, this time in my favourite blue colour. Again I used painted and collaged papers I had made previously, photographs, carrier bag and waxed paper that had had metal washers painted on it.

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Last, but not least, the first 2 pages of my (so called) Soul Journal (as devised by Sarah Whitmire) which I completed on Sunday. The instruction was to cover the first three pages with any printed page(s) and to circle any words that stood out. Next, start with the words "Today I feel...." and write for 5 minutes to fill the pages. The pages were then painted over with gesso as thickly or thinly as you wish so that the writing is fully or partially covered.

It took a long time to stencil the legend on as I had to keep waiting for the paint to dry before continuing. I used a couple of stamps and painted a very light watercolour wash over the stencilled words.

The instruction was to repeatedly write your full name all over the page but I preferred to just use my first name because that is who I am. I had painted a light wash of payne's grey over the gesso and then used gel pens for the artwork. I've decided to try and be positive in this journal and as I was listening to Take That's "Shine" while I was working some of the words crept in! That should help with positive thinking! God knows what the neighbours thought, I was singing away with the headphones on! Well......it sounded allright to me!! VBG

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BTW If you follow the link to Sarah's blog you will see that I am a long way behind in this journal. I shall be doing it when I have time because I am already committed to the journalling course but it was a lot of fun!! :o)