Sandown Photographs

I've finally had time to look at my pictures and to take advice on what I can and cannot do with the pictures I took at the show. I can't show pictures of other peoples quilts, unless they choose to send me them, which is a shame as I have pictures of most of the award winners and many of the others as well. On the other hand if you had a quilt in the show and would like my pictures of it, do let me know I will be happy to give a copy to the owner of the quilt.

pictures of the patchwork corner stand as well but I forgot, sorry. I'll start with the two that didn't win awards. This will probably be my last picture of Che as he has now gone to his new owner. He seemed to be very popular with the visitors to the show, which surprised me. I didn't expect I am however safe to put up pictures of my own work from the show, so that is what I will do. I did mean to take such acceptance of him, but I am thrilled by it.

'Tropical Punch" was seriously out classed in it;s theme category. The standard of work in the Batik Beauties category was stunning. There were two quilts there I would have loved to bring home. I was especially keen on the second place quilt, with it's huge leaves. I like the fact that the quilting changed colour to match the fabrics, the effect was stunning. I can't find my show guide right now to check who's it was, sorry. On the subject of show guides, the artists statement. I spend hours fiddling with my statements to get them down to the word count, I think it was 30 words for this guide, yet many of them are far longer. The longest I found was well over 100 words. So am I being stupid editing mine down to the limit. Often there is a lot more I would like to say but I don't because the rules say 30 words, yet they happily put in much longer statements. Any suggestions?

As you can see I still failed to get a good shot of the whole of 'Tropical Punch'. I think this time it was entirely human error. It looks to me like I wasn't holding the camera still. You would think that would be something I had learned a long while ago, but no I keep making that particular mistake. Still it probably gives you an idea of what was going on.

The close up pictures seem to have done a bit better. This first one shows one of the upper glasses. The background quilting on these was in a red-yellow variegated thread. I was thinking about the sunsets I saw in Cuba. They were red and orange and sort of spiky at the edges. There was often thin bands of cloud and the ends of them looked a lot like horizontal flames.

I guess I should mention that these are entirely pieced, I had a lot of people ask if the straw was applique, but no it isn't. The whole things is done by free cutting and then shuffling the pieces to get the different colours in the various places. The cutting did take a lot of thought to get the details I wanted, but the design came to me as soon as I read the entry form some months ago. I like the pieces that come to me complete. The parasol and wedges of fruit have their details quilted, with a silver metallic thread. I also used silver to quilt the crushed ice in the cocktails. Of course I was forced to go to a cocktail bar to research the look of crushed ice. It helped add detail to the glasses.

At one stage I had considered putting applique leaves around the border. I gave up that idea as too over the top for the design, I wanted something more subtle. I settled on quilting the leaves on in a variegated thread. they do slightly overlap the panels, as though you are looking through vegetation. If I were doing it again I think I would want to find a way to make the leaves more distinct. I still don't think applique is the answer, but maybe some way of making the quilting stronger. Thicker thread, double threads or maybe even bobbin work. Who knows, but I doubt it will come up again so it is rather academic.