What happened?

One minute I was distracted and unsettled, preparing for my holiday and the next thing I know the holiday is over, the warmest summer I can remember has passed in a blur of lazy days and we're headed towards the end of September.

I had some lovely days in Bath and Birmingham, first visiting the Kaffe Fassett exhibition at the American Museum in Bath - a wonderful explosion of colours which no pictures can do justice. It left me with a lot of joyful inspiration.

The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham was wonderful as well with lots of quilts - both weird and wonderful! Lots of vendors and a great deal of inspiration from all the lectures I attended - I find that having some lectures sprinkled through my schedule gives me time to rest my weary feet while soaking up inspiration and recharging the batteries ready for more shopping makes for good days at the festival.
I did a fair bit of shopping, but not as much as earlier years. With everything so readily available online, I don't get the same urge to buy, buy, buy as I used to, but some unusual items like hand dyed thread, patterns and books did come home with me.

What with the sultry summer days and following lack of energy, there has been lots of reading and relaxing, and little sewing. With the cool crisp autumnal feel to the air lately I feel my sewing mojo coming back, though, so don't give up on me just yet!

Quilt Festival time

Some of us can only dream about going to Market, and live vicariously through those who do, catching tantalizing glimpses of new fabric lines and patterns as they appear in various blogs and albums online. What a joy it is to be able to take part in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival for those of us who stay at home. Thank you Amy for taking the time to organize this again!

My entry this time is a quilt I named 'Authentic 2 by 4'. I managed to snag a Jelly Roll of Authentic by Sweetwater before it was too late, knowing the letters and numbers would be great in collages and as accents in quilts here and there. When I saw all the fabrics together, I felt that it would be a shame to separate them, and I kept wanting to sort them by pattern and colour. Rearranging precuts with their zigzaggy edges is very messy though, leaving you with lots of lint everywhere.

My idea for a sampler, using the entire line came from Jane Brocket's book "The Gentle Art of Quilt-Making". You wouldn't know it by looking at it, because her quilt is entirely different - all triangles, I seem to remember (too lazy to get up and check it...). It wasn't so much the quilt itself though, as her description of her inspiration for the quilt - samples from a haberdashery - which triggered the idea. When I was a kid we had a large department store in town with what I remember as a huge fabric and haberdashery department on the ground floor. You could browse through their selection of buttons mounted in squares on large boards. I used to love going there with my mum and my auntie, who was a seamstress, and browse furtively through the boards while the grown-ups were busy with their purchases. Funny how such memories can pop up from a hidden drawer in your mind when you get a little trigger such as Jane's description of her inspiration. Once I thought about that, I knew that I too wanted to make a sampler board. Knowing that my fabric strips were 2 1/2", I knew that triangles would be too small to show off the fabrics properly. I decided on rectangles, 2 x 4" finished size (hence the title) and used a natural cotton linen blend for the sashing.

I found a piece of rather loosely woven curtain fabric with a handwriting print for the backing and used parallell lines for the quilting. It is a fairly small and simple quilt, quite easy to make, but it has become one of my favourites. The neutral tones makes it fit in anywhere, and knowing that I have a sample of each and every one of the prints in the collection makes it much easier to cut into those strips in the remainder of the jelly roll and use them elsewhere.

That's my entry for the Festival, now make sure to visit Bloggers' Quilt Festival and see all the lovely quilts there! 

Sunflowerquilt

Sunflowerquilt
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

I've decided to show my Sunflower quilt for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival this time around. This is one of the quilts I have made that I have actually managed to keep for myself. I found the pattern in the first Material Obsessions book and thought it would be a good pattern to show off the lovely Sole Sunflower fabric by Valori Wells. I had been hoarding this fabric for a while and been reluctant to cut into it, but with 18" blocks I got to show off the lovely sunflowers. Once I had managed to pick the rest of the fabrics, the blocks went together easily enough, but I had a hard time choosing fabric for the border, and auditioned several choices on Flickr and got lots of help before finally ending up with the red fabric.
I think one of the reasons this quilt feels special to me is that I got so much input from my internet friends and that really made all the difference. I really got the sense of being part of a community who helped and cheered me on.
The quilting took ages. I used quite a lot of free motion quilting on the sunflower blocks, and straightish lines on the strips of the courthouse step blocks. I regretted my choice of quilting more than once, because it seemed to take ages, but I got there eventually. After washing the quilt became very soft and crinkly and remains my favourite nap quilt.
More photos of the quilt here.

Festival of Quilts

OK, so I promised to share more about my visit to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham (UK). Now where to begin? I realize that my photos can't really do the quilts enough justice, and there were so many, that I only managed to photograph a small percentage of them. There were beautiful traditional quilts and wonderful art quilts and everything in between, so what I share here are just a few glimpses of things that caught my eye. The information about the quilts is from the show catalogue.

First out is this one by Annette Morgan, called "Pay the Ferryman" including image transfers, screen printing, foils and paint. I was not surprised that it won the Art Quilt category.

Here's a closer look.

This 3 D quilt which includes felt and batting which has been shrunk to distort is the winner of the Contemporary Quilts category. It is called "Squaring Up" and is made by C. June Barnes.

Here's a closer look. I had to clasp my hands behind my back to avoid reaching out to touch and try to discover how it had been made ;-)

"A Future and a Hope" by Lynne Quinn was just amazing. It is her City & Guilds final quilt and includes a "storm at sea" pathway and "light" to shine the way.

"Rainbow Colours" by Kathy Unwin.

Nina Lise Moen made this winning entry for the Quilters' Guild Challenge "Summer in the City".

This quilt by Rosalind Gregory and Joan Herrington is called "Where have all my shirts gone?" and is made from recycled shirts. Inspired by Taunton's lost shirt factories, red braces and citiscapes.

I find myself drawn to quilts with buildings on them, whether they are homes, cityscapes or industrial plants, modern or historical, I'm always drawn in. Here's another one, "A New Leaf" made by a group of four called Fusion.

Alicia Merrett's "Mapping Earth" falls right into the same category. She had a similar, larger version, in the Art Quilts group as well.

I was amazed to learn that this one was made by a young quilter, Harry Lyons, age group 9-11! I wouldn't mind having this on my wall :-)

Among the stunning work displayed was also this one made of Kaleidoscope blocks. The maker, Solvi L. Krokeide, calls this "Life in a Kaleidoscopic World". It was originally made for a Norwegian contest themed Lonesome, Twosome, Threesome"

Ferret has made another magnificent quilt. It is called "Phoenix Rising" and includes stunning feather quilting. I have noticed her work at previous festivals and you her blog is really worth checking out.

The miniature section had quite a few stunners as well. This tiny gem "Bluer than Blue" by Betty Ball can't have been more than 7 x7 " - makes you wonder what she has done with the seam allowances!

Some fun and colourful pieces to round off this little tour of the festival. This is "A Rose Garden" by Hiroko Fukawa. It consist of square in square blocks of different sizes, quilted circles attached to the edges and lots of tiny yo-yos scattered around. Really fun and whimsical!

I finish with a detail of Ylva Ugerup's quilt "Fly out Swedish Ladies!" from her series of quilts where she portrays women who have made an impact on the world. I don't know enough about Swedish history to tell you who these two are, unfortunately, but I love all the details and handstitching in her work.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

I thought I’d share my Amy quilt for Amy’s quilt festival ;-)
The name refers to a different Amy though – Amy Butler - and the quilt is made entirely from her fabric line Ginger Bliss. I usually name my quilts, but his one has just remained my ”Amy Butler quilt” all along, not getting a name of it’s own. This is one of the first big quilts I have made that I kept for myself, and I don’t think I could bear to part with it, to tell you the truth. Just looking at it gives me a happy feeling.

I first became aware of this fabric line when it was on its way out, being replaced by her next one, and supplies were dwindling in the shops. I was bowled over and ended up on a mad shopping spree, buying pieces of all designs and colourways I could find on different websites around the world. After a few hectic weeks I had amassed a sizeable pile of fabric and just knew I wanted to include all prints in one quilt, and that to give the fabric the starring role, it would have to be a quilt in a simple design. I found one I liked in this book, a simple four-patch design with large squares. This was quite a departure from the way I had been working up till that point – no templates or intricate blocks, just speedy cutting and stitching together. Until then I had also made it a point to mix fabric from different lines, and come up with my own combos.

There was just something about these fabrics that told me they had to be together. And to tell you the truth, there weren’t all that many fabrics in my stash that would have gone well with these, as most of my fabric until then was very bright or saturated. I did think that Kaffe Fassett’s Lotus Flower print in pastel might work as a companion, and ended up using that as a border on the pieced backing. Yes, there’s a pieced backing too – the first time I went down that road as well (a lot of firsts here!). I wanted to use as much of the fabric as I could in one quilt, having bought so much of it, and I had also wanted to try the “stack and slash” method, so that’s what I did for the backing. The quilt is heavily quilted in a spiralling rose pattern with light pink rayon thread, emphasizing the floral theme. I finished it off with a teal binding fabric.
So what is it about these fabrics and this quilt that I love so much? I know there is a childhood memory in there, but I’m a bit fuzzy about the details. It all has to do with my grandparents’ big trip to Italy when I was four. I still remember the day they came home. It was a big event, and the whole family went to the station to meet them. I seem to remember my grandmother in a new floral dress, and this being the late sixties; there might have been a resemblance to this in the retro style of the fabrics in my quilt. I also remember being given a wonderful pink straw hat, which was put on my head right there, at the station, so they must have been carrying it in their hand luggage, eagerly waiting to give it to me. There was such a happy feeling to that day that it has stuck in my memory. Part of it was being reunited with my lovely grandparents (they lived in the same house, so I was used to seeing them every day). Come to think of it, this was also probably their first holiday abroad together – my grandfather was in the merchant navy, so when he came home, they preferred going to their house in the country on my grandmother’s time off. They had apparently had a very good time, because I remember them as being very happy and almost radiant – maybe it was like their second honeymoon (or actually their first, since they were thrown straight into a demanding everyday life when they married in 1928). My grandmother’s taste in fabric and colour sense might be part of the mix too. As I said, I can’t pinpoint the exact thing, but somehow, looking at this quilt evokes memories of glorious summer days, my grandparents and Italy. Italy has always seemed like a magical place to me, and I have visited the country several times, and the fabric also reminds of these trips. Hm, I’ve just thought of a name for it – I think I’ll call this my Italian Bliss quilt, now how about that?

PS. That same day at the station also inspired another little project – it must have been an awesome day…