Last week I spent 3 busy days in Birmingham at the Festival of Quilts. As ever it was a really enjoyable time spent walking miles (exhausting!), meeting lots of friends from far and near (lovely) and viewing all the beautiful quilts and artwork on show (inspiring and tiring). Unsurprisingly there was some shopping too.
So what did I see? Lots of photos following.
My very dear friend Carolyn Saxby's beautiful work, "Watching The Dark Sky". Carolyn will be blogging about this quilt soon. It was lovely to meet up with Carolyn and Margaret Garrood who had travelled up to the Show from Cornwall.
Annabel Rainbow was on her Through Our Hands stand painting her latest quilt during the Show. It was interesting to stand for a while and watch her process.
These beautiful and enigmatic portraits of her mother were also part of the Through Our Hands display and are so poignant. These were only two of a much larger collection. If you click on the detail you will be able to see that they are made with wool sewn onto net/tulle.
This is Susan Lenz's Wall of Keys and it took her 9 hours to assemble on site. She brought it across from America in two suitcases. She gave a very enjoyable and thought provoking lecture on how a series of work might develop with regular references to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. If nothing else it made me realise how many ideas for potential work pass in and out of my head while I'm working without ever being captured.
I was on the lookout for different ways to display your work and this nifty sletchbook hanging caught my eye.
There was a huge amount of work in this beautiful piece by Lin Crompton called Shallow Waters. The individual pieces were all hand cut (I was told) and I love the flow of colour throughout. The quilt had been juried into the Fine Art Quilt Masters section.
I loved this piece by Australian quilter Cathy Jack Coupland entitled "Australia My Way".
Another Fine Art Quilt Master "Sharon & Co" by Ann Smith.
My Facebook and blogging friend Amo House made this wonderful quilt called "Dragons Ho" and won her a Highly Commended! Well done Amo on your first outing at Festival!
These wonderful creatures are by Vladimir Telnykh who had his own gallery. Some of the works, like the fish, were mounted on wood.
I love this fabulous Fish Monster by Daisy May Collingridge. "This is the fish monster that wished for legs and walked himself out of the water evolution complete". You can see more Quilt Creations behind him.
Mavis Walker made this wonderful Chess Set and it won her First Prize in Quilt Creations. It was almost impossible to photograph it for all the people admiring it.
As my mum remarked this morning when I described it to her, you need to see it in real life to appreciate this superb coat by Marijke Van Welzen, who you can find on Facebook.
Equally popular was this winning quilt in the Pictorial Category. It is by Claudia Pfeil and is called Turtle Bay. The photos don't show up the crystals that cover it and give it flecks of light.
Don't give up, we're nearly through it all.
Another blogging friend, Frauke Schramm, entered this quilt titled "Passion Always Wins" into the guild Challenge category.
Finally a little shopping including an apron I bought from Alison Hulme.
Yes, I could have made myself an apron but I liked the screen printing on this one and you have to support fellow artists, don't you?
Well done if you've got this far. I think you deserve a drop of your favourite tipple. I did take even more photos but I'll spare you them.
PS Here's mine on display
That's yer lot!
This post should be on Pages 'Working in a Series' but it's published in the wrong place. It will make sense if you read the first part on the separate page. Why does life have to be so complicated!
Having looked closely at my own work and the work of others who inspire me it was time to start working with my own inspiration. While I had looked at the shapes of the windows in St Ives I started to consider other shapes and how they relate to each other.
I started by making tracings from my photographs, concentrating on the main shapes.
One of the exercises was to work in watercolour and I made the sketches above exploring the colours I associate with St ives.
I tried working in a grid layout using the roof shapes but felt a bit frustrated by the rigid arrangement.
Some more play followed with varied arrangements and colour schemes. Of the four arrangements above I decided to concentrate on the one bottom left.
The sketch above was taken into Photoshop and played about with.
From working with sketches I moved on to working with fabric and have spent several days making improvisationally pieced units which are currently languishing on my equally improvised design wall. The image below combines and compares two working layouts, neither of which resemble the sketches above but have been informed by them.
Excuse the weird shape at the bottom, it's not part of the design it's a door stop. I have played around with incorporating definite house shapes using the white of the cottages that you see in St Ives but somehow felt the starkness of the white was too much. The arrangement on the left, such as it is, has more of the feel I am after but there is a long way to go with the design. It's neither one thing nor the other at the moment. I have had to give this quilt a title before it's finished and went for 'Higgledy Piggledy' as I felt this describes the many rooves and alleyways in St Ives but I don't achieved that think I've achieved that atmosphere yet.
This course is about working in a series and while I may have gone off at a bit of a tangent working through this piece (because I need it to fulfill a brief for a challenge) I do have a lot of inspiration to take me forward with this series.
My baby returned from its sojourn at the Festival of Quilts today.
Pinned to the back of it were the judge's comments:
I'm pleased with the comments on the whole but the bit I don't understand is the 'Quilting, Needs Attention'. Considering the fact that the winning quilt was a pojagi with no quilting in it, not even anything joining the two layers together, why did mine need quilting? I wonder if the felt support caused the issue? I am delighted though that both judges appreciated my design, colour, and surface design. I worked so hard at the printing and in pulling all the disparate elements together in the construction. If I'm honest the comments about it needing more quilting upset me and my initial response was to think I won't bother next year, after all this was entered as an Art Quilt and pojagi has been seen as being encouraged in former Quilt Shows, but I've got over that. BW was right in saying the thread colour was a detraction, I wasn't sure I had chosen the right colour when I was working it. Maybe a blue rather than a variegated yellow would have worked better. Just for information, the whole quilt (not including the felt support) was two layers held together by stitch.
I don't know whether I will make another pojagi, the work was immense, but I suspect I might as the effect is wonderful. I realised walking round the show that I didn't need to use the felt backing. Other quilts had been hung from tabs, off rods, from perpsex rods and from metal clamps.
This is part of Chloe Redfern's quilt, above.
I think the maker of the winning quilt may have had a similar issue with her hanging system but instead of finding a way to add a hanging sleeve on the back she made provison for a batten to pass through a turned pocket at the top of the piece.
I'm hoping to go to the Great Northern Quilt Show later this month and I shall be on the lookout for display methods.
