Here's the final instalment of photos from the galleries at the Festival of Quilts this year (from me at least - Hazel may have more when she is back from Scotland!).

First today is Contemporary Quilt's Elements gallery. Each year this special interest group of the Quilters' Guild has a juried challenge open to all members, with a theme and a set format. The interpretations of the Elements theme were wide ranging, and really illustrate the breadth of contemporary quilting, as you will see from the pictures. 

Unfortunately I didn't note the makers of the quilts in my general views above - if you know who they were do leave a comment. You can read more about the setting up of this gallery on Claire Passmore's blog. Below are some close-ups of some of the quilts (click to get the whole image). There will be a book available later in the year from Contemporary Quilt's website.

And finally the Fine Art Quilt Masters gallery. An international juried competition open to all, celebrating 'those quilts that transcend craft and achieve art status', the gallery showed the seventeen shortlisted quilts. The winner was announced at the awards ceremony and as usual attracted comment and controversy (well it wouldn't be a worthwhile competition without controversy would it?!). Here are some that attracted my attention. Do leave a comment to let us know what you thought if you saw the quilts (or if you didn't).

Susie Koren's winning quilt was striking in its simplicity. The maker used monoprinting with soya milk and raw pigment and minimal stitch to illustrate the repetitive force of the sea. It was inspired by Newton's explanation that the ocean tides result from the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon on the earth.

Karina Thompson's The Leper's Skull is one of a series of pieces made after spending time with the collection at the Biological Anthropological Research Centre in Bradford, where there were artefacts from a mediaeval lepers cemetery in Cirencester.

The next three quilts appealed to me because of their colour, the techniques used and the subject matter. I love the effect of breakdown printing (where a silk screen with dried procion dye on it is printed with wet medium resulting in a serendipitous, never-to-be-repeated, gradually changing pattern of marks. The skill is in how these fabrics are then used in composition. Leah Higgins employs a beautiful colour range and machine quilted detail in this stunning quilt inspired by what we leave behind.

Using the same technique, this time combined with discharge printed fabrics and dense machine and hand stitching and a subtle colour palette, Audrey Critchley's piece was inspired by a challenge to dye a palette of pale fabrics.

And Cherry Vernon-Harcourt's hand-drawn and painted piece was inspired by the landscape of North Norfolk.  I love the spareness of line in this - and the subject matter of course!

The final two quilts on our tour of the gallery contain another of our favourite elements: text. Claudia Helmer has used laminated paper screen-printed text to convey her feelings about the empty words spoken by politicians and the corporate world. The central panel was cut out and hangs in front of the main body of the quilt. Simple, dense machine quilting completes the work. 

Sara Impey takes machine quilting to another level with her meticulously free motion stitched words, this time on 'tapes' which were woven together. A former journalist, what she writes is as interesting as the way she writes it, and makes for fascinating reading. This piece explores the meaning of the concept of the stitch.

Well that is the last of my photos. We hope you have enjoyed our perspective on the Festival of Quilts for 2015. If you have, please leave us a comment.

Bye for now

Terry & Hazel

Continuing our round-up of all that was good at this year's Festival of Quilts, first comes a mention for the Quilters' Guild In the Spotlight gallery. This gallery appears biennially and aims to celebrate talented quilters form the regions and specialist groups of the Guild who are not (yet) well known. Makers are asked to follow a theme: this year it was Adventures in Wonderland to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Submissions ranged from depictions of scenes from the book to much wider interpretations. Here are three of the more unusual ones. The first is Jane Varrall's Down, Down, Down, Would the Fall Ever Come to an End? which uses Jane's own silk painting together with digitally printed fabric from Fingerprint. Jane writes:

On the subject of the Tenniel illustrations, we were captivated by Hilary Drake's collection of miniatures. Appropriately styled as bookmarks, she managed to reproduce the drawings by sewing machine (hand-done, feed dogs up, not programmed) in black thread and minute stitches, complemented by her favourite Liberty fabrics; and they were stunning. 

She says: "I looked through the book for inspiration. What immediately caught my eye were the original black and white drawings dome by John Tenniel. The line sketches reminded me of small stitches so I decided to make these the centre of my work."
Click on the images for a close-up.

Very different to the others and intriguing with it (although very difficult to photograph) was the piece by Christine Chester. Entitled The Dark at the End of the Tunnel it was a comment on the link between the conscious and the unconscious mind and 'stream of consciousness' writing. Building on the thought that Lewis Carroll used his own experiences as a migraine sufferer as inspiration for parts of his book, it was constructed from three (possibly four) machine stitched sheer layers hanging off the wall to achieve a 3d effect. Christine writes: "My hanging suggests the links between the conscious and the unconscious mind and the development of writing from a stream of thoughts and experiences. Words link the layers of consciousness together, creating a tunnel of unconscious creativity."

One gallery I wish I hadn't missed was that by Linda Barlow: Searching for the Invisible Woman. Her work is based on research with women in 'middle age' and explores the sense of invisibility felt by many in this group. This gallery has provoked a raft of extreme reaction on the web by those much more eloquent than me, some angry that (they feel) she has chosen to depict this aspect of (some) women's lives, rather than a positive, empowering one (see Helen Conway's blog) and others in agreement that the sentiments expressed are real. I must admit that my initial reaction on reading about the exhibition (as newly part of that age-group) was 'who says?' and 'why are they not doing something about it?' but I have also to admit that I have thankfully not had that experience so am not qualified to comment. By making her thought-provoking art and starting the dialogue I suspect Linda has achieved what she set out to achieve. If you missed it too, why not visit her website to see more of her work. Her blog post from March 2014 explains the thinking behind the exhibition, and reveals that her aim was also to explore the positive opportunities seized by many women as they reach this stage in their lives. You may not agree with all the sentiments, but I guarantee it will set you thinking about the issue (image below borrowed from Linda's blog).

Well since this has turned into a longer post than I'd planned, there will be more galleries later in the week

thanks for reading

Terry

There were many exciting galleries with stunning displays of work. Below are some views of the Through Our Hands exhibition, Maker, Making, Made, curated by Laura Kemshall and Annabel Rainbow.

We really enjoyed our friend Christine Chester's poignant gallery entitled Fragility of Memory. Her serene and mostly monochrome work dealt with the her father's decline due to Alzheimer's Disease,. He had been a fisherman and never forgot that identity. The photo shows Christine and her mum Dee (an amazing lady and textile artist in her own right) who was helping out. 

And finally for today,  Luke Haynes' Clothes Portraits gallery. These large quilts featured fabric portraits of the sitters who were asked to bring objects that represented themselves. The applied figures are created from the clothes the sitter was wearing and the log cabin background from used clothing sourced from the area where each sitter lived. I love the detail and we both always love log cabin

That's all for today, but there will be more soon. Do leave us a comment and let us know what your favourites were.

Terry & Hazel

Two weeks ago we were in the middle of the Festival of Quilts and by the end of Saturday I had not taken any 'proper' photos, or even really visited any galleries. On the Sunday morning I managed to get a couple of hours off and did a whirlwind tour (no shopping ... well maybe a little ... but only catalogues, honest!) and took my usual stack of photos of things that caught my eye. I have just finished sorting out my photos and I thought you might like to see a few of them.

The first are quilts entered in to the competition categories; as always those with a watery theme appealed to me:

The next few are landscapes: 

And the final few for today are quite varied, although monochrome seems to have caught my eye ...

Hope you enjoyed looking at those - I'll post some more over the next few days or weeks.
Thanks for dropping by

Terry

We're enjoying meeting lots of creative people on our stand and during our workshops. It's a fun experience but quite tiring!

We've not taken many photos today, and are having trouble uploading those we have taken but here are a couple of quilts that caught our eye:

Now You Know What it Feels Like by Alison Hulme in the Quilting in Action Gallery

Scandinavian Mittens by Gillian Travis in the same gallery.

A delightful antique log cabin cot quilt from the Quilters Guild collection.

And finally this exquisitely stitched miniature in the form of a bookmark by Hilary Drake called Rabbit in Wonderland.

We'll try to show you some more tomorrow - or perhaps once we are home with a decent internet connection!

Bye for now

T & H

Well we promised you a look at our stand so here it is (with apologies for the slightly odd lighting at FOQ!). After quite a lot of deliberation we managed to fit everything in, and the result is a colourful display of our fabric, threads, kits and quilts.

Here are or neighbours - Gail Lawther and husband Chris ...

and the view from our stand.

Our thread colour-wheel ...

And finally, Hazel's quilt, 'You had Beautiful Lips' achieved third place in the Quilters Guilds Challenge (theme: Passion in Pieces). It's a wholecloth quilt, with a photograph digitally printed by Laura and Jamie at Fingerprint Fabrics, densely machine quilted with text and pattern.

More tomorrow (hotel wifi willing!)

H & T

From this ...

(and that was only half of it!)...

to this ...

It must be Festival of Quilts time again! We have been busy setting up our stand - QIA14. It's under wraps at the moment so come back tomorrow to see more. Better still if you are coming to the show why not pop by and say hello?

Bye for now

Terry & Hazel

#festivalofquilts