Great North Quilt Show - Harrogate - Susan Briscoe

 These are two quilts from Susan Briscoe's special exhibition at the show. The show is quilts from her book, Japanese Quilt Inspirations. The first one is called Furoshiki'. It's a quilt I quilted for her and is now for sale here. It will be coming back to me for a bit more quilting before it goes to a new home. When I quilted it initially we were on a very tight schedule and it had to go back for photography before I was completely happy.

The second quilt is called 'Kunimoto', and is also up for sale. This one was interesting to quilt the border is a very slinky fabric, which looks good especially when it's quilted but man does it try to wriggle. I did really enjoy working on this quilt though as it had a lot of different textures in it. I like quilt where you feel the different fabrics as you quilt over them, but then, to me, quilting is all about making things that are tactile.

Great North Quilt Show - Harrogate - Winner

It's not often I am so pleased by the judges choice of Championship quilt, but this year there have been two winners that really pleased me. Unfortunately at Sandown one of those beat this one, but all's well that ends well, it's made it this time. The quilt is called 'Overleaf' and was made by Susie Corke. I just love this quilt. I'm a sucker for stars anytime and small beautifully pieced ones are even better. I'm also a huge fan of sampler quilts (hence Ferreting Around) and on point settings, especially when I don't have to quilt them.

 The photo really doesn't capture the detail of this quilt, you'll just have to take my word for it, the piecing and quilting are both lovely. At Sandown we saw this quilt before we saw either the second place or winner of the bed quilt category and our initial response was it should have been the champion. It turned out there was a glut of exceptional bed quilts this year there.

The spiky rosette if the champion quilt award, one of the others is first place in bed quilts and I think the third one was for hand quilting but I may be wrong on that. The certificate is a judges choice. I hope this quilt will be displayed again somewhere. I would love to see it again and I'd love as many people as possible to have a chance to admire it. I'd love to make a quilt like this at some point, but I'm not sure I have the patience for it.

There are more pictures of this quilt on Susan Briscoe's blog here.

Great North Quilt Show - Harrogate

Here are my quilts from the Harrogate quilt show this weekend. It's the first time I have entered this show and as I was lucky enough to pick up an award it was also my first visit to the show. It is a bit of a trek from London to Harrogate so we set off Saturday evening and stopped at a services for the night. As we are both night owls it really makes things a lot easer for us. After a gentle Sunday morning drive we arrived at the show about lunchtime. Perfect. It's a lovely area and I would very much like to spend a day or two exploring the area at some point.

Before setting off I had checked on the location. The show organisers mention that the entrance is a fair distance from the main road. They aren't kidding. On the other hand there is a Sainsburys with a petrol station at the entrance too, handy after a long trip. On route to the quilt show I noticed there had been a wool craft show on the Friday and Saturday, which I would have enjoyed, I wonder if it is an annual feature?

The first two of my quilts were in the Bed Quilt category. I really didn't think either of them would have a chance of an award here as I had heard this is a very competitive show so I was really pleased to find that Ferret Fractal Stars had picked up a Judges Merit award.

The other bed quilt I put in you probably remember, it's Holiday Starrfire. It's my interpretation of Starr Fabrics Starrfire kit. I made it as a holiday from quilts I needed to think about with the intention that it would go on my bed last winter. I had been thinking this might be it's last show so I could use it this winter, but then it was invited to a show in France. So I guess I can wait another year. If it's going to be around for another year I may see if it can go anywhere else too.

My other two entries were in the small wall hanging category. This is a great category when you need to ship your quilts to shows, you can send smaller lighter quilts :) See I do sometimes think about the shipping problems.

The portrait is "A brief moment of clarity. It is of a friend of mine who is also the writer of Cancertown, the graphic novel that inspired the quilt "Bad Rain". I had hoped this might picked up and award but I had forgotten it wasn't in a specific art quilt category, that does make a difference. It did also mean the small wall hanging category was larger than I would have expected.

Finally there is the quilt that brought me to the show. "Leather Star" won the small wall hanging category. It was great to see it there with a ribbon on. They are really nice ribbons too. In the UK they are colour coded by show not by where you place in the show. I love these shaded blue ones.  The certificate next to it is a judges choice award from Jenny Rayment, thank you Jenny.

Below are a couple of pictures of me with the trophy, I think we were having way to much fun during the presentation, but hey it was a lovely day at a really good show, what do you expect :)

Portfolio Updated

I've finally got my portfolio on my web site updated, which is great, except we have a nagging suspicion I have forgotten some quilts. It's worrying that I could forget a quilt, but I guess when they are coming thick and fast it is a risk. So if you can think of one I have missed out please let me know.

Also is anyone going to the Harrogate show next weekend? If so would you be able to send me a picture of my quilts there. I have three pieces in the show, 'Blue Moon', 'Red and Blue Tulips' and 'my Fat Quarter of Paradise'. I just hope the last one is going to behave, it is rather large and I suspect it won't fit the frame very well. I wonder if the judges make an allowance for the frame being too small for the quilt.