Inspiration from The Knitting and Stitching Show

 

 

Lest you think it's all trouble and strife here, I had better show evidence of fun times as well ;-) I had a lovely visit to London two weekends ago, and among a flurry of restaurant visits and shopping in Regent Street (Liberty's and Anthropology - need I say more?) we found time to visit the Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia as well. Well, actually that was one of the main purposes to the visit to be honest - we have our priorities in order after all...

I'm sorry I wasn't a very good photographer and failed to note the names of the artists, and the pics from my phone don't do them all enough justice, I suppose, but at least I can share a few glimpses of the inspiration I found. If anybody knows who has made any of these, or if you see yours and don't want it shared here, please let me know and I'll edit the post accordingly.

 This black and white quilt was quite a dizzying experience (the figure seemed to be stenciled on) but really intriguing to look at, I think.

 This cheerful quilt made my friend and me both exclaim "I want to make an orange quilt"! I really should use more orange and yellow in my works, they are such lovely sunshiney colours, don't you think?

 This one with lovely curved seams was really densely quilted. That kind of thing seems to draw me in more and more - there will be more quilting in some of my future quilts, I think.

This one gives me inspiration on putting together different experimental blocks into a quilt - yes, I'll definitely file this away for future reference.

 Maybe my pile of printed fabric pieces from a workshop years ago could be made into a quilt as well, and of course, the edges don't have to be even either! (The sides on this one are straight - it's the photo that is crooked!)

 A lot of the quilts were long and narrow. I didn't see any information - maybe they are from a challenge or competition? A lot of them seemed to be in sea/sand/sky colourways and lots of different techniques were used.

This was my favorite, and the only one where I got a picture of the details, so I can tell you that it is made by Ann Louise Williams and is called "New Horizons". She writes: "My quilt is a first for me. To work on such a large piece and for an exhibition, expanded my own horizons. Using photos of Whitby as my design source I began to sketch.
I lamnated torn coloured tissue onto scrim with pva and wallpaper paste, dyed and printed over the whole before stitching onto felt, adding a cotton backing, and quilting through all layers."
I loved all the detail in it, the group of houses you had to step up close to see, the boat and of course the colours.

This one had some amazing detail on the statue and the building - very nice work! And I love the perspective giving the feeling of a tall magnificent building towering over you.

The exhibition wasn't very big, but as you can see, there were some really interesting quilts there. I did manage to get a bit of shopping done as well. More about that tomorrow!